Allele Biotechnology Inc. (ALLELE) in San Diego, California, and K Pharma Inc. (K Pharma; TSE: 4896) in Tokyo, Japan, have entered into a licensing agreement to develop regenerative medicine products.
K Pharma was founded as a spinoff from Keio University School of Medicine by co-founders Drs Komei Fukushima, Masaya Nakamura and Hideyuki Okano, the coming President of the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). K Pharma, which became a public company in the Tokyo stock exchange Growth market in October 2023, is dedicated to novel therapeutic development based on advanced iPSC technologies. The company continues to maintain close ties with Keio University, where the first-in-human clinical study with human iPSC-derived cell therapy is in progress.
“Today, we announce our partnership with K Pharma to development cell therapy treatment. We take pride in seeing the dedicated GMP cell therapy platform we have established over a decade to be integrated yet again into the workflow of one of world’s most sophisticated iPSC biotech companies”, said Jiwu Wang, Ph.D., CEO of Allele Biotechnology.
“Developing regenerative medicine has been a long-term focus of our group. Translating our knowledge into the real world that benefit patients can only succeed through serious effort using the most reliable materials and techniques. I am glad to see that through several years of collaboration K Pharma team secured this ALLELE partnership” said Komei Fukushima., Ph.D., CEO of K Pharma.
Press Contacts: Nobuki Nakanishi, Chief Scientific Advisor, Allele Biotechnology Masato Matsumoto, Chief Financial Officer, K Pharma
About Allele Biotech
Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ALLELE) is a San Diego-based company that explores the mechanisms of biological processes to develop technologies and products for biomedical research and therapy development. ALLELE’s mission is to increase accessibility to superior research and clinical assets by offering cutting edge technologies in individual products and fully integrated platforms. Allele utilizes proprietary non-integrating, mRNA-based, cellular reprogramming and mRNA-directed differentiation methods to develop cell therapy using cGMP-grade iPS cells and their derivatives. In 2018 the company commissioned world’s first commercial cGMP facility that has been custom built for clinical manufacturing of pluripotent stem cells and their derived products.
About K Pharma
K Pharma is a public traded company in Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE: 4896), and was established in November 2016 as a spin-out venture of Keio University School of Medicine. Leveraging human iPS cell technology discovered by Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in 2007, K Pharma is engaged in regenerative medicine business for conditions such as spinal cord injury and stroke, as well as “iPS drug discovery” business targeting intractable neurological disorders. K Pharma is committed to addressing unmet medical needs worldwide and contributing to the field of medicine through regenerative medicine and iPS drug discovery business. For more details, please visit: https://en.kpharma.co.jp