Tuesday, BioTime Inc. (BTIM) announced a peer-reviewed scientific publication on the reversal of developmental aging in normal human cells , taking a strategic step forward in the development of its ReCyte iPS Technology. Shares touched a new intraday high of $8.42 for the year and is trading at $7.52, an increase of nearly 30% from the previous days close.
The company's propreity ReCyte is being developed as a means of implementing iPS technology on an industrial scale. The induced pluripotent stem or iPS cell technology forms the basis for regenerative medicine.
Regenerative medicine , a multi-billion dollar opportunity, is a novel way of treating degenerative diseases by using specially-grown tissues and cells (including stem cells), laboratory-made compounds, and artificial organs.
According to the article, BioTime and its collaborators were able to reverse aged differentiated cells to become young stem cells capable of regeneration using precise genetic modifications.
The demonstration that the aging of human cells can be reversed may have significant implications for the development of new classes of cell-based therapies targeting age-related degenerative disease, BioTime noted.
The company has filed new patent applications on methods used in the research paper to reverse the developmental aging of cells and the use of transcriptional reprogramming to produce young cells of many types for use in regenerating tissues affected by aging.
Michael West, President and CEO of BioTime said, " This is just the beginning of some really fascinating new possibilities for intervening in age-related disease. We believe that these technologies will have a significant impact on the future of medicine. However, it is important to underscore that much work needs to be done to translate these findings into safe and efficacious therapies."
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