There is growing awareness that the long-standing unmet need for specific counting of therapeutic tissue stem cells has been and continues to be a significant impediment to progress in stem cell therapy, gene and gene editing therapies (because targeting tissue stem cells is essential for durable one-time treatments), and drug development (because drug candidates that damage tissue stem cells fail miserably). This year, the FDA’s Standards Coordinating Body (SCB) listed determination of tissue stem cell-specific dose as a priority for standards development for stem cell clinical trials.
Asymmetrex, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts has the goal of moving the fields of stem cell science and stem cell medicine into a new quantitative era. “Because of their unique biological properties – the same ones that make tissue stem cells the remarkable therapeutic agents that they are – it has not been possible to determine the number of tissue stem cells in any setting,” said Dr. James Sherely, Founder & Director of Asymmetrex, adding, “Not in research, not in stem cell biomanufacturing, and not in stem cell medicine.”