Drug Screening

Kadimastem lead project in Drug screening on hES-derived human tissue

There is a major medical interest in discovering new pharmaceutical compounds that can enhance the process of nerve myelination. The myelin sheaths that cover axons are essential for nerve electrical conduction, and their destruction in demyelinating diseases and trauma (such as for example in Multiple Sclerosis and spinal cord injury) causes severe neurological dysfunction and paralysis. The specialized cells that form the myelin covers of nerves in the central nervous system (CNS) are the oligodendrocyte.  Myelination in the brain and spinal cord takes place essentially in the early years following birth. The human body has a capacity to produce new myelin and repair the loss of myelin, but this capacity decreases in adulthood. In relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis, the clinical symptoms of loss in neurological functions appear in adulthood when the process of remyelination is too inefficient. In order to discover new pharmaceutical compounds that can stimulate the activity of oligodendrocytes to myelinate, and therefore, sustain the body's capacity to repair damage to myelin, in vitro myelination systems based on human oligodendrocytes derived from hES cells would be very valuable. Whereas it is  very difficult to obtain these cells from the human brain, functional oligodendrocytes can be produced by differentiation of  hES (Izrael et al., 2007). Kadimastem has a license from the Weizmann Institute of Science for the technology allowing to produce human oligodendrocytes from hES cells (see Figure). Coculture of these cells with neurons allows to measure in vitro myelination (panel E) making it possible to screen thousands of chemical molecules for lead compounds. 

The potential toxic effects of drugs can be assayed early during R&D by use of various human tissues differentiated from hES cells, such as for example liver cells. These applications of hES cell differentiation technology may be provided by Kadimastem to Pharmaceutical Companies interested in drug screening  and drug discovery.