Millipore Entered Into Human Embryonic Stem Cell Business
Millipore Corp. has inked a deal with an Australian company that gets it into the human embryonic stem cell business.
Billerica, Mass.-based Millipore (NYSE: MIL) announced on Wednesday that it had signed an exclusive license to develop and market Stem Cell Science’s “serum free media,” a biological environment in which to grow human embryonic stem cells.
Media refers to the nutrients and sugars need to create conditions in which embryonic stem cells can grow as naturally as possible. Millipore is billing the product as the first of its kind that offered improved methods to grow the cells without needing animal serum.
Both companies declined to disclose financial terms. But Stem Cell Sciences will receive royalties from all sales of the product, which will launch commercially by the end of 2006.
The federal government limits funding for embryonic stem cell research, but local institutions including Harvard University have expanded efforts to develop human embryonic stem cell lines available for researchers.
