Kyoto –

Following its success in automating the process of creating induced pluripotent stem cells, Kyoto University's CiRA Foundation will start producing iPS cells from patients' own cells utilizing the automated culture system in April.

Under a project aimed at making iPS cells — which theoretically can develop into almost all organs — widely available for regenerative medicine by drastically reducing the production cost, the foundation has successfully created the stem cells in a month using a German-made immune cell production apparatus in which a healthy person's blood, reagents and specific genes were mixed.

From April, the foundation will automatically make autologous iPS cells and turn them into, among others, heart muscle and nerve cells at a new facility in the city of Osaka. The iPS cell-derived cells will be frozen with liquid nitrogen and stored for later safety and efficacy studies.

Immune rejection-free cell transplantation therapies are made possible by the use of autologous iPS cells, which the foundation calls "my iPS cells." But it takes about six months and costs some ¥50 million ($316,000) to manually create iPS cells from a patient's own cells and differentiate them into a specific cell type to treat the patient's disease.

For the time being, the new facility, Uehiro Laboratory for my iPS Cell Research, will be equipped with four units of the German system and produce enough cells for 20 people a year.

But it plans to have 200 units of automated production equipment in total in a decade by developing Japanese-made systems jointly with Canon and Panasonic so it can expand the cell supply capacity to 1,000 people while cutting the production cost to ¥1 million per patient.

"We hope to increase treatment options by making rejection-free autologous cell therapies available to many patients," said Masayoshi Tsukahara, the foundation's research and development chief.