Human cell sheet regenerative medicine technology

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Living cell sheet technology has been enabled by recent innovations in cell culture plastics that permit harvest of living cells without trypsin or enzyme treatments. Cell sheets have been a result with numerous functional examples reported across diverse stem and differentiated cell sources over ~20 years.

This technology now in regenerative medicine clinical trials in Japan using autologous patient cell sources to create sheets, implant them into tissue sites, and treat several human diseases. The unique cell sheet regenerative therapy is enabled using Professor Teruo Okano’s cell sheet-based tissue engineering techniques and direct applications to regenerative therapies.

This technology, now published in >400 research papers and protected by many global patents, is in clinical studies/trials in Japan, France and Sweden using autologous human donor cells in cartilage, heart, cornea, middle ear, periodontia, and esophageal living sheet transplants (e.g., Terumo’s Japanese HeartSheetÒ product for cardiac repair). CSTEC@Utah is a research center established at the University of Utah to develop new allogenic cell sheet regenerative approaches in Utah for first-in-human trials in the USA.

Utah clinical researchers (cardiothoracic and orthopedic) and supporting technology translation groups (Pharmaceutics, Bioengineering, Cell Therapy Center) at University of Utah, with initial USTAR support, have initiated an allogenic cell sheet translational center, currently focused on regenerative therapies for cardiac and cartilage regenerative medicine. Current human allogenic progenitor cell sources used in many clinical trials as injectable isolated cell suspensions are compared to cell sheet implants.


Read More at the CSTEC website