Plasticell, the biotechnology company developing regenerative drugs using high throughput stem cell technologies, today announced that it is funding industrial collaborative projects in two separate laboratories based in University College London (UCL).

The first collaboration, with the groups of Professors Chris Mason and Nigel Titchener-Hooker, of the UCL Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, will result in process improvements to Plasticell’s Combicult™ through the application of engineering principles such as whole bioprocess modelling. Plasticell will supplement a grant from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) to fund a mature post-graduate student, Tristan Pritchard- Meeker, formerly a GlaxoSmithKline scientist, who will carry out full time research on the project before submitting a thesis for the degree of EngD.

The second collaboration, with Dr Suwan Jayasinghe of the BioPhysics Group of UCL’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, will result in novel applications of Plasticell’s Combicult™ through state-of-the-art stem cell microencapsulation. Plasticell will supplement a grant from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) to fund a doctoral student, Patrick Odenwälder, who will carry out full time research on the project before submitting a thesis for the degree of PhD.

In addition to their respective academic group leaders, Dr Yen Choo, CEO of Plasticell, will act as the students’ Industrial PhD Supervisor.

“We are extremely pleased to have put in place these collaborative research projects that allow us to access the expertise of two leading academic groups, to contribute to the training of talented scientists and to leverage external funding to progress our research,” said Dr Choo.

“We are delighted to be increasing our collaborative activities with Plasticell allowing us to further optimise its highly innovative Combicult™ platform technology,” commented Professor Mason.
“The BioPhysics Group looks forward to working with Plasticell towards a novel combinatorial science for cell biology,” added Dr Jayasinghe.