TORONTO, Nov. 14, 2018 /CNW/ - panCELLa is proud to announce the publication of "Linking a cell division and a suicide gene to define and improve cell therapy safety"  in the November 21^st  2018 issue of Nature.

Cell therapies hold enormous promise of new treatment and cures for many currently devastating degenerative diseases, including diabetes, arthritis, blindness, heart and lung diseases.  "Even our own cells are intrinsically dangerous", said Dr. Andras Nagy, the principal investigator of the paper, Senior Scientist at Sinai Health System's Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, President and Chief Scientific Officer of panCELLa. "They can change into cancerous cells, lead to severe disease and cause death. Cells that are manufactured and expanded outside the body and used for cell therapies can be even riskier because they constantly mutate and may not be eliminated by the immune system. We took up the challenge of maximizing the safety level of therapeutic cells to a higher level than our own cells by building a molecular kill-switch placed among the genes of the cells, which enables the efficient elimination of dangerously dividing cells that may cause cancer."

Dr Nagy added "We are certain that our ability to estimate the risk will further accelerate cell therapies as a promising way to treat, or even cure, devastating diseases. We recognized the importance and impact of the translational aspect of our research and established panCELLa Inc. to help pave the road from the bench to the bedside".

"This paper validates Dr. Nagy's research in cell therapy at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and is the cornerstone of our mission at panCELLa," said Mark Krembil, Chair of panCELLa's Board. "We are confident that research will continue to show panCELLa offers unparalleled safety for therapeutic cell products, ultimately advancing cell therapies to the clinic."

"Dr. Nagy's research in this Nature publication outlines panCELLa's first steps in transforming current approaches to cell and gene therapy for many diseases and will have a great impact on patient care" stated Dr. Armand Keating, a founding director and Chief Medical Officer of panCELLa.

"This is an affirmation of over seven years of research and a milestone for our Company, the cell therapy market and, most importantly, for patients," Mr. Krembil went on to note.  panCELLa's FailSafe^TM Cells mitigate the risk of therapeutic cells going awry.  This is the only quantifiable "safety switch" currently available for cell therapies thereby allowing regulators to determine the risk of a given cell therapy, doctors and clinicians to quantify the level of risk and patients to make an informed decision.

About panCELLa

Incorporated in August 2015, panCELLa (www.pancella.com) was founded by Dr. Andras Nagy and Dr. Armand Keating based on Dr. Nagy's ground-breaking work in the area of stem cell research.  Through panCELLa, Drs. Keating and Nagy are seeking to create an effective cell therapy derived from stem cells, which are modified to provide a high level of safety before and after the cells are introduced to the patient. panCELLa seeks to create universal "off the shelf" FailSafe^TM Cells and to assist the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors to achieve such with their own cell lines.  Targeted medical applications include deadly, debilitating, or aggressive diseases requiring immediate treatment where there is no time to cultivate a customized stem cell treatment from the patient (i.e. cancer, cardiac infarct, stroke and spinal cord injury).