Cellino and Matricelf Partner to Scale Personalized Spinal Cord Injury Treatments
Cellino and Matricelf (TASE: MTLF) announced today a groundbreaking global collaboration aimed at accelerating the biomanufacturing of personalized spinal cord injury treatments. This partnership integrates Cellino’s cutting-edge Nebula™ technology with Matricelf’s breakthrough regenerative approach, setting the stage for scalable, patient-specific regenerative therapies.
Revolutionizing Regenerative Medicine Through Collaboration
This partnership marks a significant milestone in the advancement of regenerative medicine. By combining Cellino’s automated induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) manufacturing capabilities with Matricelf’s double autologous 3D differentiation process, the two companies are paving the way for a new era of personalized treatments for spinal cord injuries.
“Our collaboration with Matricelf exemplifies how international cooperation can accelerate innovation and expand access to life-changing therapies,” said Marinna Madrid, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Cellino.
The Role of Nebula™ in Scalable iPSC Manufacturing
Nebula™, Cellino’s proprietary closed-cassette biomanufacturing system, is designed to produce high-quality iPSCs at scale with unmatched consistency, sterility, and efficiency. By automating iPSC generation, Nebula™ enables contamination-free, on-demand stem cell production—an essential step in bringing regenerative medicine to real-world clinical applications.
One of the biggest challenges in regenerative medicine is ensuring a reliable, safe, and cost-effective supply of patient-specific cells. Cellino’s Nebula™ technology addresses these challenges through advanced AI-driven automation, ensuring that every batch of iPSCs meets rigorous quality standards for therapeutic applications. This innovation plays a critical role in making personalized stem cell therapies viable for large-scale clinical deployment.
Matricelf’s Transformative Approach to Neural Tissue Engineering
Matricelf is at the forefront of regenerative medicine, developing patient-specific therapies to repair damaged spinal cord tissue. The company’s unique platform integrates an extracellular matrix-based hydrogel derived from the patient’s own omentum, enabling precise differentiation of iPSCs into functional neural tissues. This innovative method eliminates the need for immunosuppression, significantly improving safety and treatment efficacy.
A key milestone in this collaboration was the successful delivery of autologous iPSC lines from four donors, manufactured by Cellino, to Matricelf. Leveraging these high-quality iPSCs, Matricelf has engineered functional neural tissues that exhibit synchronized electrical activity—a hallmark of viable neural networks.
Rigorous industry-standard assays have validated the genetic and protein expression profiles of these engineered tissues, confirming their neural characteristics. The results demonstrate the compatibility and reliability of Cellino-generated iPSCs with Matricelf’s differentiation process, reinforcing the potential for clinical translation.
Towards Clinical Trials: A New Horizon for Spinal Cord Injury Treatment
Matricelf plans to submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application next year, aiming to bring its autologous iPSC-derived therapy into clinical trials. This marks a critical step in addressing the urgent unmet need for effective spinal cord injury treatments.
Currently, spinal cord injuries have limited treatment options, often leaving patients with permanent loss of function. The combination of Nebula™-generated iPSCs and Matricelf’s innovative tissue engineering process presents a transformative opportunity to restore function and improve quality of life for millions of patients worldwide.
“Collaboration on this international scale is a vital step toward our vision of a fully autologous regenerative therapy for spinal cord injury,” said Gil Hakim, CEO of Matricelf. “Matricelf’s innovative platform, in combination with Cellino’s Nebula™ technology, is setting new standards in scalable patient-specific tissue engineering, bringing us closer to real-world applications of regenerative medicine.”
Expanding the Frontiers of Regenerative Medicine
This partnership underscores the power of combining advanced technologies—ranging from AI-driven automation and high-throughput biomanufacturing to sophisticated neural tissue engineering—to accelerate the commercialization of next-generation regenerative therapies for neurological diseases worldwide.
Key benefits of this collaboration include:
- Scalability: Automated iPSC generation at unprecedented levels, ensuring consistent, high-quality cell supply.
- Personalization: Fully autologous approach reduces the risk of immune rejection, increasing treatment efficacy.
- Clinical Translation: A streamlined path toward regulatory approval, with plans for upcoming clinical trials.
- Global Impact: Bringing regenerative treatments closer to widespread adoption, addressing the needs of spinal cord injury patients globally.
The Future of Patient-Specific Regenerative Therapies
As regenerative medicine continues to evolve, the Cellino-Matricelf partnership represents a paradigm shift in how stem cell-based therapies are developed and delivered. By uniting expertise in AI-driven iPSC manufacturing with cutting-edge neural tissue engineering, this collaboration is driving the future of personalized medicine.
The ability to create patient-specific neural tissues that functionally integrate with existing spinal networks holds immense promise not only for spinal cord injuries but also for broader applications in neurodegenerative diseases, stroke recovery, and other complex neurological conditions.ological diseases worldwide.
