Preci, a biotechnology company advancing patient-derived cell models to bridge the gap between preclinical testing and clinical trials and Biopredic International, a biotechnology company specialising in the design and manufacturing of human and animal in vitro assay systems, today announced 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 this 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.
Hepatocytes with an increased lifespan of over 12 hours
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 revolutionise 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.”