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Cellino successfully manufactures and delivers autologous iPSC lines from four donors to Matricelf for groundbreaking neural tissue engineering
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 11, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cellino and Matricelf (TASE: MTLF) announced today a collaboration to accelerate the global biomanufacturing of personalized spinal cord injury treatments using Cellino’s Nebula™ technology combined with Matricelf’s breakthrough regenerative approach. This collaboration combines Cellino’s automated iPSC manufacturing with Matricelf’s double autologous 3D differentiation process, paving the way for scalable, patient-specific regenerative therapies.
Nebula™, Cellino’s proprietary closed-cassette biomanufacturing system, is designed to produce high-quality induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) at scale with unparalleled consistency and sterility. This innovation allows for on-demand, contamination-free iPSC production, bringing regenerative medicine closer to real-world clinical application.
As a key milestone, Cellino has successfully manufactured and delivered autologous iPSC lines from four donors to Matricelf, a biotech company developing regenerative therapies for spinal cord injury. Matricelf’s approach integrates an extracellular matrix-based hydrogel derived from the patient’s own omentum, facilitating precise cell differentiation and tissue formation while eliminating the need for immunosuppression.
Matricelf has now transformed Cellino-generated iPSCs into functional neural tissues, demonstrating synchronized electrical activity—a hallmark of functional neural networks. Rigorous industry-standard assays confirmed key neural characteristics, including genetic and protein neural marker expression of engineered tissues with Cellino’s iPSCs, with results comparable to Matricelf’s own iPSC-derived tissues.
With the goal of redefining treatment paradigms for spinal cord injury, Matricelf plans to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application next year to bring its autologous iPSC-derived therapy into clinical trials. This transformative approach addresses an urgent unmet need, potentially restoring function for millions of patients worldwide.
"Collaboration on this international scale is a vital step toward our vision of a fully autologous regenerative therapy for spinal cord injury," said Gil Hakim, CEO of Matricelf. "Matricelf’s innovative platform, in combination with Cellino’s Nebula™ technology, is setting new standards in scalable patient-specific tissue engineering, bringing us closer to real-world applications of regenerative medicine."