Stemnovate is based in Cambridge and provides a cell-based platform for human drug discovery as an alternative to animal testing. The microengineering enables multiple organ studies simultaneously on cells generated by reprogramming technique in the laboratory.
There is an urgent need for better technology to make the drug discovery faster and efficient especially as World Health Organisation data reveals that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have become the leading cause of death worldwide, with reported 40.5 million deaths that are about 71%, of all reported mortalities in 2016. The four main NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases.
The NCDs are complex diseases, and for novel drug discovery, it is crucial to understand human genetic and physiological responses. But, the present state of the art has tremendous reliability on animal testing, and this results in adverse events being reported late in clinical trials leading to expensive drug failures.
The primary human cells can be useful indicators, but tissues are a limited resource as several patients are on a waiting list for transplants leaving fewer options for cells for research. Therefore, Stemnovate's ability to create multiple human cells in the laboratory is genuinely game-changing as it allows both genetic and physiological analysis which used to be quiet a challenge earlier.
