Progress in spinal cord injury lays the foundation for regenerative therapies that ‘target aging and chronic disease at a cellular level.’
A new partnership between Cellino and Matricelf, which aims to create personalized regenerative therapies for the treatment of spinal cord injuries, has generated patient-specific neural tissues with the potential to restore lost function. Combining advanced stem cell technology with 3D tissue engineering, the collaboration is a step towards addressing age-related degeneration and chronic conditions.
Cellino’s AI-driven biomanufacturing platform produces high-quality induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) at scale, with the goal of making personalized regenerative medicine more widely available. The platform ensures consistency and sterility, enabling the production of autologous iPSCs – cells derived from a patient’s own tissue – on demand and without contamination.
In this collaboration, Cellino manufactured and delivered iPSC lines from four donors to Matricelf, which differentiated them iPSCs into functional neural tissues using its 3D tissue engineering process that incorporates an extracellular matrix (ECM)-based hydrogel derived from the patient. The companies say this “double autologous” approach eliminates the need for immunosuppression, as the tissues are fully matched to the patient’s immune system.
According to Matricelf, the resulting neural tissues have demonstrated synchronized electrical activity, a key indicator of functional neural networks. Genetic and protein assays have confirmed that these engineered tissues exhibit the neural characteristics necessary for therapeutic applications.
The ability to produce autologous iPSCs and transform them into functional neural tissues is significant, and the broader implications extend to neurodegenerative diseases and age-related decline, potentially setting the foundation for treating conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration.
“By replacing damaged tissue with biologically younger neural tissue, the Cellino-Matricelf collaboration is advancing functional restoration for neurodegenerative diseases and aging-related decline,” Cellino CEO Nabiha Saklayen told us.
Nabiha Saklayen
“Aging and injury both stem from the body’s diminishing ability to self-repair—this breakthrough enables personalized, patient-derived iPSCs to restore function once thought irreversible. For spinal cord injury patients, this could one day mean walking again. More broadly, it lays the foundation for self-sourced cell replacement, a game-changing step toward regenerative therapies that target aging and chronic disease at the cellular level.”
Matricelf says it plans to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application next year to initiate clinical trials of the spinal cord injury therapy. Success in these trials could validate the approach for wider use in treating degenerative diseases, and provides a potential model for future regenerative therapies targeting complex neurological and age-related conditions.
Photographs courtesy of Cellino. Main photograph shows a Cellino-generated iPSC transformed by Matricelf into functional neural tissue.