Business Overview

The Company was founded for the specific purposes of solving key problems in the emerging field of regenerative medicine, cell availability and immune rejection.  There are growing numbers of cell transplant therapies that have already been demonstrated to be effective in treating major diseases such as diabetes, liver disease and retinal disease, and many others.  What is not available is a reliable, renewable and essentially unlimited source of human cells for use in these transplant procedures.  Existing embryonic stem cell lines produce cells that will be difficult to match to the patient’s immune system.  Parthenogenetic stem cells can solve both of these problems.

ISCO’s goal is to be the universal supplier of therapeutic cells for:

1. All developing embryonic stem cell based therapeutic procedures.
    

2. The medical/scientific research community.

To achieve these goals, ISCO has set three objectives:

1. To create an abundant source of parthenogenetic stem cells to meet the rapidly growing research and therapeutic demands of regenerative medicine and provide those cells to researchers entering clinical trials.
    

2. To create stem cell lines from unfertilized eggs, which would have all the benefits of human embryonic stem cells, but are superior in their ability to eliminate or diminish immune rejection in patients.
    

3. To build a true “Cell Bank” using its existing technology that will allow for on-demand delivery of cells that could be matched to the patient’s own immune system and reduce or eliminate the need for immunosuppressant drugs.

ISCO scientists are confident that we have now made the scientific breakthroughs that will meet these objectives.  ISCO has created the world’s first human cell lines through the use of parthenogenesis and has already created the parthenogenetic stem cell line that matches the most common immune type in the US population.  These parthenote cell lines will, we believe, be critical to open the pathway to successful stem cell therapy.