Brussels, June 1 2007. – A European consortium of scientists from five leading universities, a research institute and a SME specialising in cryopreservation technology have been selected and awarded by the European Commission to conduct fundamental research in the field of cryopreservation techniques for stem cells. The project has been named CRYSTAL or CRYo banking of Stem cells for human Therapeutic AppLication. The international team will receive research grants up to 2.5 million EUR within the Research Framework Programme 6.
The participants of this project were selected at the first ITERA (International Tissue Engineering Association) workshop organised by chairman and founder Albert Ramon, consultant at the University Hospital of Antwerp, department of Gastroenterohepatology: the University of Cologne, Medical University of Vienna, University of Zurich, Catholic University of Leuven, University of Antwerp, Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering and the Life-Sciences Group, a European SME active in cord blood banking and cell banking applications.
After submission of their proposal at the end of 2005, the team’s project was chosen as third out of more than 800 submissions receiving a final score of 28,5 on 30 points.
“We are convinced of the great therapeutical potential of stem cells and join our efforts to provide a solid foundation for the development of future stem cell therapies“, declared Professor Jürgen Hescheler of the University of Cologne and project leader of CRYSTAL.
The development of human stem cell therapies will have to build on a safe and reliable supply of human stem cells which can only be assured through cell banking. However, the isolation, identification and culture of stem cells are currently not standardised between the different laboratories in Europe and reproducibility of protocols is limited. Today’s banking approaches still rely on storing sources of stem cells rather than on banking of defined well-characterised stem cell populations (both adult and embryonic). Cryopreservation of stem cells itself is not yet optimised and validated for the different cell types.
These challenges currently limiting the routine application of stem cell banking with a therapeutic perspective will be addressed in the CRYSTAL project. The consortium will develop tools and optimised procedures to enable cryopreservation of different stem cell types and allow safe production of sufficient numbers of high quality cells for future human therapy. This will comprise standardised protocols and tools for stem cell isolation, identification and culture, novel approaches to their cryopreservation (novel cryoprotectants, freezing in different conformations) and an automated quality control system for stem cell preparations.
The project has commenced in the beginning of March 2007 bringing all partners together to discuss concrete collaboration and the exchange of stem cell samples. This important research award is fully in line with the European Commission’s vision that has lead to the earlier adoption of specific regulation for tissues and cells. Europe once more underlines its believe in and vision on the future of stem cell therapies. CRYSTAL is in a position to solve existing problems in an integrated systematic approach and to provide standardised, reproducible methods and tools to advance therapeutic stem cell research in Europe and export best practices to the rest of the world.
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For further information, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Hescheler Institute for Neurophysiology, University of Cologne
Phone: +49-(0)221-478 6960 Email: J.Hescheler@uni-koeln.de
CRYSTAL Participants
University of Cologne, Germany Medical University of Vienna, Austria
Fraunhofer-Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Germany Life-Sciences Group N.V, The Netherlands
University of Zurich, Switzerland Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
University of Antwerp, Belgium Arttic, France
Visit the CRYSTAL Project website:
www.crystal-eu.org
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