12 December 2019 - - The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued US Patent No. 10,501,723, entitled "Methods of Reprogramming Animal Somatic Cells" covering what is commonly designated "induced Pluripotent Stem cells", US-based Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American) (TASE: LCTX) and AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) said.

The issued claims include methods to manufacture pluripotent cells capable of becoming any cell in the body. The patent has an early priority date, having been filed before the first scientific publication of Shinya Yamanaka, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2012.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are typically derived from adult skin or blood cells which have been "reprogrammed" or "induced" to retrace their developmental age and regain the potential to form all of the young cell and tissue types of the body. 

In 2010 inventors of the -723 patent issued TODAY demonstrated that this reversal of developmental aging even extended to the telomere clock of cell aging.

This reprogramming technology provides an alternate source of starting material for the manufacture of potentially any type of human cell needed for therapeutic purposes.

Because iPSCs can be derived directly from adult tissues, they can be used to generate pluripotent cells from patients with known genetic abnormalities for drug discovery or as an alternative source of cell types for regenerative therapies.

US Patent No. 10,501,723, entitled "Methods of Reprogramming Animal Somatic Cells" was assigned to Advanced Cell Technology of Marlborough, Massachusetts (now Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine) and licensed to Lineage and sublicensed to AgeX Therapeutics for defined fields of use. Inventors of the patent include Michael D. West, CEO of AgeX and previous CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, Karen B. Chapman, Ph.D., and Roy Geoffrey Sargent, Ph.D.

Lineage Cell Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell therapies for unmet medical needs. Lineage's programs are based on its proprietary cell-based therapy platform and associated development and manufacturing capabilities.

With this platform Lineage develops and manufactures specialised, terminally-differentiated human cells from its pluripotent and progenitor cell starting materials.

These differentiated cells are developed either to replace or support cells that are dysfunctional or absent due to degenerative disease or traumatic injury or administered as a means of helping the body mount an effective immune response to cancer. Lineage's clinical assets include (i) OpRegen, a retinal pigment epithelium transplant therapy in Phase I/IIa development for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the developed world; OPC1, an oligodendrocyte progenitor cell therapy in Phase I/IIa development for the treatment of acute spinal cord injuries; and VAC2, an allogeneic cancer immunotherapy of antigen-presenting dendritic cells currently in Phase I development for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer.

Lineage is also evaluating potential partnership opportunities for Renevia, a facial aesthetics product that was recently granted a Conformité Européenne Mark.

AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) is focused on developing and commercialising innovative therapeutics for human aging.

Its PureStem and UniverCyte manufacturing and immunotolerance technologies are designed to work together to generate highly-defined, universal, allogeneic, off-the-shelf pluripotent stem cell-derived young cells of any type for application in a variety of diseases with a high unmet medical need.

AgeX has two preclinical cell therapy programs: AGEX-VASC1 (vascular progenitor cells) for tissue ischemia and AGEX-BAT1 (brown fat cells) for Type II diabetes.

AgeX's revolutionary longevity platform induced Tissue Regeneration aims to unlock cellular immortality and regenerative capacity to reverse age-related changes within tissues. AGEX-iTR1547 is an iTR-based formulation in preclinical development.

HyStem is AgeX's delivery technology to stably engraft PureStem cell therapies in the body.

AgeX is developing its core product pipeline for use in the clinic to extend human healthspan and is seeking opportunities to establish licensing and collaboration agreements around its broad IP estate and proprietary technology platforms.