This month, stem cell biotechnology company Asymmetrex® launched a campaign to introduce the company’s new online calculators for rapidly counting therapeutic tissue stem cells to cell culture core facilities at leading research colleges and universities. Today, September 20, Asymmetrex® President and CEO, James L. Sherley M.D., Ph.D. will make the first introduction of the campaign in-person to users of the Cell Culture Core Facility at UMassAmherst.
Outside of the world of laboratory science, one of the most significant group of contributors to the excellence of U.S. biomedical research is not that well known to most people. This often-understated group is made up of the directors and technical staff of research core facilities.
Research core facilities catalyze and accelerate the research pursued by their users by providing scientific and technical expertise with the use of high-end instruments and technologies that are usually too expensive and too complex for individual research laboratories to obtain and utilize effectively on their own. Core facility personnel also play an important role in achieving the teaching mission of research institutions to train the next generations of excellent biomedical investigators.
Because of this central role in stem cell medical research played by cell culture core facilities at major research institutions, Asymmetrex® selected them as the company’s first focus for introduction of its new online calculators for rapid counting of therapeutic tissue stem cells. The standard research services of cell culture core facilities, including growing and counting human tissue cells, integrate directly into Asymmetrex’s online portals for rapid stem cell counting.
Before Asymmetrex’s technology was available, there was no method for routine, convenient counting of tissue stem cells, which are always found in mixtures with other tissue cells that obscure them from identification and counting. The need for a method to quantify tissue stem cells has significantly held back both stem cell research and stem cell medicine for more than a half century. Asymmetrex’s counting technology is the first solution for this long-standing need for a means to monitor tissue stem cells in experiments and determine their dosage for more effective stem cell treatments.
Today, September 20, Asymmetrex President and CEO, James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D., is presenting the new counting technology to the users of the Cell Culture Core Facility in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His presentation will be the first seminar in the current academic year for the IALS Core Facilities Seminar Series.
The UMassAmherst core facility was the ideal choice for Asymmetrex’s lead-off introduction to the capabilities and advantages of the new online stem cell calculators. Many of the validation studies for the new stem cell counting technology were performed by the UMassAmherst Cell Culture Core Facility under the direction of Michael P. Daley. Director Daley is one of the first core facility directors in the country who can now provide his users access to rapid counting of two different types of tissue stem cells widely used in stem cell research, umbilical cord blood stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells. In the future, through his core facility, faculty, students, trainees, and research staff at UMassAmherst will also be able to gain additional access to online calculators for counting many other types of important tissue stem cells used in their research.
Asymmetrex CEO Sherley has shared that he is looking forward to this first core facility introduction, which will be in-person. The company also plans a webinar series that will allow core facility directors anywhere in the U.S. to learn about doing what UMassAmherst has already started. “After UMassAmherst in-person, the first national webinar in the core facility introduction series is scheduled a week later on September 27!”
Asymmetrex®, LLC is a Massachusetts life sciences company with a focus on developing technologies to advance stem cell medicine. The company’s U.S. and U.K. patent portfolio contains biotechnologies that solve the two main technical problems – stem cell-specific quantification and stem cell expansion – that have stood in the way of more-effective use of human adult tissue stem cells for regenerative medicine and drug development. Asymmetrex markets kinetic stem cell (KSC) counting, the first technology for determination of the dose and quality of tissue stem cell preparations for use in stem cell transplantation medicine and pre-clinical drug evaluations. Asymmetrex® is a member company of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute|BioFabUSA (ARMI) and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio). The company’s development of online calculators for rapid stem cell counting has been funded by R&D grants from ARMI|BioFabUSA and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.