LIFE & BRAIN GmbH, a German development-stage biomedical enterprise, has filed a patent application with the European Patent Office for an improved protocol for generating high numbers of human microglia, implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
Microglia – a type of immune cells located in the brain- are thought to play an important role in the development and progression of AD. To understand more about their function, researchers in the PHAGO project, an IMI project devoted to the development of immunomodulatory therapies for AD, looked at genetically distinct iPSCs generated from the blood of people with AD and microglia derived from them. It was reported that this technique is challenging and cumbersome.
LIFE & BRAIN GmbH, a partner in the IMI PHAGO project, has now developed an improved method that involved new types of materials. This technique might offer new perspectives for a possible immunotherapeutic approach to treat people who have a genetic disposition to develop AD. In the PHAGO project, 40 iPSC lines have already been generated from donors that carry specific genetic mutations. These cell lines are accessible for researchers via the “European Bank for Induced pluripotent Stem Cells” (EBiSC). https://bit.ly/2LOjeH4
