License agreement extends access to culture-stable pooled hepatocyte cell models with increased longevity for use in DMPK and ADME studies
Kyiv, Ukraine, and Rennes, France, 10 April 2024: Preci, a biotechnology company advancing patient-derived cell models to bridge the gap between preclinical testing and clinical trials, and Biopredic International, (“Biopredic”), a biotechnology company specializing in the design and manufacture of human and animal in vitro assay systems, announces a collaboration for the production of pooled suspension human hepatocytes. Under a license agreement, Biopredic will leverage Preci’s expertise and production capacity in sourcing primary hepatocytes, and combine with its own IP and know-how in cell pooling. The partnership will provide DMPK researchers access to large batches of high performing suspended pooled hepatocytes with extended longevity from multiple donors.
Pooled suspension human hepatocytes play a crucial role in assessing drug metabolism and hepatic clearance, providing a more representative understanding of human hepatic metabolism for predicting drug outcomes and assessing their impact on safety and efficacy. Despite this, the limited culture lifespan of pooled hepatocytes hinders long-term studies, potentially reducing metabolic competence with repeated use of the same batch.
Combining capabilities, Preci and Biopredic will provide pooled hepatocytes with an increased lifespan of over 12 hours, offering a single assay-based system to assess a broad range of drugs effectively and consistently. Accommodating both high- and low- clearance compounds, the stable and large-scale production of pooled suspension hepatocytes will increase throughput capacities for DMPK assays and reduce batch-to-batch deviation and assay costs, while the large availability of hepatocytes from multiple donors ensures diversity of CYP and Phase II enzymes. Under the license, Preci’s production capacity will reach 20,000 vials in 2024, greatly increasing global access to hepatocytes pooled and available to customers through Biopredic.
Anton Hanopolskyi, CEO, Preci, said: “At Preci, we believe that increased diversity and availability of representative cell models will revolutionize the drug discovery landscape. This partnership strengthens our position in the human-derived assays market, providing our customers with access to high quality, reproducible assays, and we look forward to continuing to work with Biopredic to advance our translational models for use in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics studies.”
Christophe Chesne, Founder, Biopredic International, commented: “We are proud of Preci's achievements made under our know-how license agreement. Biopredic now has first line access to many sources of primary hepatocytes suitable for further pooling. With the addition of Preci’s primary hepatocytes, our liver assay system portfolio comprises primary hepatocytes, the iconic HepaRG™ model and the newly launched HepaSH™, making Biopredic’s hepatic offering the most complete and advanced on the market.”
