According to Bloomberg, two companies that produce different types of stem cells have signed contacts to sell their products to drugmakers, showing the new technology will be used to help discover medicines not just to repair or replace damaged cells.
California Stem Cells Inc., an Irvine, California, biotechnology company that turns embryonic stem cells into neurons, said today it's selling the brain cells to researchers trying to find drugs to treat Lou Gehrig's disease. CellDesign Inc., of
The efforts of these two closely held companies indicate stem cells will aid in the search for old-fashioned drugs long before they're infused into patients. It also suggests that the first businesses to benefit from stem cell technology will be traditional pharmaceutical companies and their suppliers not developers of new kinds of therapies.
``It's similar to what happened in the last century with molecular biology'' and gene therapy, said John Hambor, CellDesign's founding chief executive officer, in a telephone interview yesterday. ``We're now going down a similar path with stem cell biology. While it may lead to cures by itself, it will drive the next generation of drug discovery.''
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