Media Releases

New collaboration between CCRM and Nikon to reap benefits outside the lab

January 15, 2013

TORONTO, ON – The Cen­tre for Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Regen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine (CCRM) has entered into an agree­ment with Nikon Cor­po­ra­tion to place the Nikon Bio­Sta­tion CT Inte­grat­ed Cell Cul­ture Obser­va­tion Sys­tem, and relat­ed soft­ware, in CCRM’s prod­uct devel­op­ment facil­i­ty to per­form high through­put stud­ies of patient-derived stem cell respon­sive­ness to test mol­e­cules in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment. Togeth­er, CCRM and Nikon will devel­op new algo­rithms nec­es­sary to cap­ture cel­lu­lar and mol­e­c­u­lar events as they unfold. The end result will be the gen­er­a­tion of cru­cial data that should help advance per­son­al­ized regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion is an excit­ing ini­tia­tive that will have mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits for CCRM and its indus­try con­sor­tium,” says Dr. Peter Zand­stra, CSO of CCRM and Pro­fes­sor of Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. “The stud­ies we will under­take are well aligned with our efforts to stan­dard­ize met­rics in stem cell respons­es. The equip­ment will enable us to image plat­ed cells and per­form analy­ses reg­u­lar­ly over a 24-hour peri­od, there­by allow­ing CCRM sci­en­tists to rec­og­nize when cru­cial changes are hap­pen­ing to the cells, in real time. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant when test­ing how cells react to drugs or genes.”

Con­tin­ues Dr. Zand­stra, “Of note, the open inter­ac­tion with Nikon, includ­ing co-devel­op­ment efforts of next gen­er­a­tion imag­ing algo­rithms, should have broad impact for the research com­mu­ni­ty. CCRM is excit­ed to lead this col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

CCRM has a ful­ly resourced, 6,000 square foot devel­op­ment facil­i­ty focused on cell repro­gram­ming and engi­neer­ing; cell man­u­fac­tur­ing; and, bio­ma­te­ri­als and devices.

About the Cen­tre for Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Regen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine (CCRM)

CCRM, a Cana­di­an not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s Net­works of Cen­tres of Excel­lence pro­gram and six aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners, sup­ports the devel­op­ment of tech­nolo­gies that accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of stem cell- and bio­ma­te­ri­als-based tech­nolo­gies and ther­a­pies. A net­work of aca­d­e­mics, indus­try and entre­pre­neurs, CCRM aims to trans­late sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies into mar­ketable prod­ucts for patients. CCRM launched in Toronto’s Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict on June 14, 2011. CCRM is host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Stacey John­son
Man­ag­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
Cen­tre for Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Regen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine
Tel: 647–309-1830
stacey.johnson@ccrm.ca
www.ccrm.ca