Stem cell therapy is the use of human stem cells to prevent and treat medical disorders. The most common type of stem cell therapy is bone marrow transplantation, which has been used for many decades.

Various stem cell therapies are in development in laboratories around the world. One of the most common is the development of hematopoietic (or blood making) stem cells (HSC) for the treatment of cancer and chronic infectious diseases. HSC can be modified with Lentiviral vectors to reprogram the entire hematopoietic cell system (all blood cells) to prevent the development of various forms of cancer or to treat a genetic disorder. Other stem cells being developed are mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and umbilical cord-derived (UC) stem cells. MSCs and UC have several important applications in the area of cancer therapy and regenerative medicine. A new type of stem cell with tremendous potential is the induced pluripotential stem (iPS) cell. iPS cells are produced by adding Lentiviral vectors to mature skin cells that express certain genes that reprogram the cell to become a stem cell.

At Lentigen, we have programs in several of the above stem cell types: HSCs are being developed to target cancer and infectious disease; discovery programs are being initiated to use MSCs; Lentiviral vectors that express the genes to generate iPS cells have been developed.