StemoniX® a biotech company revolutionizing how new medicines are discovered, announced today the opening of its new, state-of-the-art research & development (R&D) facility in La Jolla, CA. The facility will house StemoniX’s research team, who will concentrate on developing new preclinical applications, disease modeling techniques, and drug discovery opportunities involving the company’s high-throughput microOrgan technology platforms.
microOrgans are the world’s first ready-to-use assay plates containing living microtissues engineered from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). Designed to enable high-throughput human drug screening without the need for drugs to enter a human body, microOrgans, including microBrain® and microHeart®, offer the potential to deliver significant cost and time savings to the pharmaceutical industry by enhancing the safety, consistency, and accuracy of human clinical trials that today rely on animal models and limited human testing as predictors of drug interactions across an entire patient population.
“We are proud to have our roots as a Johnson & Johnson’s J-Labs start-up company, but we have grown substantially in the past few years, necessitating opening an R&D facility fully dedicated to advancing our microOrgan platform technology,” said Ping Yeh, co-founder and CEO of StemoniX.
“In just the past few months, we have demonstrated the depth and versatility of our microOrgan platform, including the successful development of a Rett Syndrome disease model and the initiation of a research collaboration agreement with the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Our new facility will enable us to build upon these and other innovations involving our microOrgans, while at the same time, fostering collaborations with forward-thinking pharmaceutical and biotech companies.”
The new facility will house StemoniX’s R&D team and is located in a global epicenter of biotech and biopharma development activity. It is close to Janssen, Takeda, Vertex, and Celgene and other large pharmaceutical companies, as well as world renowned biotech research labs, including the Salk Research Institute for Biological Studies, the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
“We congratulate StemoniX on its new R&D facility in La Jolla, which is a clear signal of the company’s forward momentum and the potential of its microOrgan technology platform. The growth of StemoniX is a testament to the robust strength of California’s life sciences sector, which supports more than 311,000 jobs and is moving over 1,300 new medicines through the development pipeline,” said Mike Guerra, President and CEO of California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), the trade association representing California’s life sciences industry.
“As advocates for effective national, state and local public policies that support entrepreneurs and life sciences businesses, CLSA is eager to stand behind StemoniX as it expands in California and advances its mission to revolutionize how new drugs are developed for patients in California and around the world.”
About StemoniX
StemoniX is empowering the discovery of new medicines to treat challenging diseases via the world’s first ready-to-use assay plates containing living human microOrgans®, including electrophysiologically active neural (microBrain®) and cardiac (microHeart®) cells. Predictive, accurate, and consistent, StemoniX’s products enable pharmaceutical scientists to quickly and economically conduct high-throughput screening in a simplified workflow. Through their Discovery as a Service branch, the company also partners with organizations to screen compounds as well as create customized microOrgan models and assays tailored to individual discovery and toxicity needs. Visit www.stemonix.com to learn how StemoniX is helping global institutions humanize drug discovery and development to bring the most promising medicines to patients.
