The biopharmaceutical company will launch the tumour stem cell culture trays that has presented at the BioSpain 2016 fair

The Basque biopharmaceutical company StemTek Therapeutics will shortly launch on the market some innovative three-dimensional tumour stem cell culture trays ready to be used in the laboratory. Cell2Sphere, as these trays are called, have been recently patented and presented at the BioSpain 2016 sector fair, held in Bilbao at the end of September.

This product “saves the client laboratory – highlights Ángel García Martín, founder and CEO of the company – from having to invest in learning to carry out three-dimensional laboratory cultures”. The trays arrive prepared to be introduced directly into the incubator. “The laboratory”, he points out, “in large and extensive culture operations, simply buys the product, uses it and discards it”.

The ‘Cell2Sphere’ consists of 96-dot plastic trays, a common format in the industry that enables to make an average sample. They contain cultures of three-dimensional solid tumour spheroids – instead of two – so that the ‘in vitro’ test, which constitutes the initial phase, reflects better the biology of the tumour and the results obtained are more reliable to be transferred to the later clinical phase. Such cultures come from populations enriched in stem cells, which is the technology used by StemTek Therapeutics.

After a year and a half of work, last June StemTek Therapeutics patented the development of the trays and registered the trademark. In order to promote them, they are not only conducting a dissemination campaign but also offering them to potential customer laboratories for testing. “We are convinced”, says Olatz Leis Esnaola, co-founder of the company, “that what will really work to stimulate the demand of these trays, is that pharmaceutical companies use them and check their advantages”.

In order to make easier for pharmaceutical companies the testing process of their drugs in different types of tumours, StemTek Therapeutics will initially put on the market culture trays for the practice of tests with brain tumours, colon cancer and breast cancer. Subsequently, until the end of the year, it plans to take out nine more types of trays for pharmacological tests with the remaining most frequent tumours, such as those of the prostate, lung and pancreas. StemTek Therapeutics also offers multiple cell lines within each of these tray types and is able to manage on-demand line orders coming from industry.

The commercialization of the ‘Cell2Sphere’ is going to suppose for StemTek Therapeutics a qualitative leap in its usual activity of provision of services, since the pharmaceutical companies that use it will be able to carry out experiments on the efficacy of their medicines directly in their own laboratories without having to commission external tests.

Results against cancer

This firm, established in 2013 by two cancer researchers with more than twenty years of experience – Ángel García Martín and Olatz Leis Esnaola – began its activity in October 2014 at the KABI incubator in the Zamudio (Biscay) Science and Technology Park with the purpose of providing services to the pharmaceutical industry based on the knowledge acquired by both researchers; especially, in the field of tumour stem cell biology, which initiate cancer, resist therapy and are responsible for recurrences and metastases. “We set ourselves the objective of transferring our knowledge to the industry because, from the point of view of tumour biology, it is clear that those populations must be fought and, for this, a new generation of anticancer drugs must be obtained”, says Ángel García.

StemTek Therapeutics’ activity combines proximity to the Basque support network for innovation in the biotechnology sector with a global business approach. “Our natural market, due to accessibility, is Europe, although, in practice, it is global. In our service area, which is the one we have developed more, we have a client in Barcelona and the rest were in France and Germany till recently, when we incorporated another one from the United States. In the product area we can say that our market is already global, because it does not matter so much whether or not to be based in the country where the trade is done to get customers”.

This international projection of StemTek Therapeutics, however, is based on strong local roots. The managers of the firm value positively the instruments articulated by local institutions to support research work and give special importance to the fact that the Basque Government considers biotechnology one of its strategic lines for economic development. “Being in the Zamudio (Biscay) Science and Technology Park – they indicate – we can access common structures, and we are next to a group of about forty biotechnology companies with several of which we share projects. In addition, in the business management part, we initially received support from BEAZ to establish ourselves and, later, from Seed Capital Bizkaia (accompaniment and investments). Likewise, we maintain collaboration agreements with academic centres with which we usually develop the R&D part of drugs”.In short, “we feel integrated into an ecosystem that is treating us very well”.