Stemcell Technologies

History

Allen Eaves (MD, PhD, FRCPC), a hematologist and cancer researcher, co-founded the Terry Fox Laboratories (TFL) in Vancouver with his wife, Connie Eaves, in 1981. Unsatisfied with commercially available cell culture reagents, Allen Eaves’ research group at the TFL began making their own media for culturing hematopoietic stem cells. Eaves eventually began to sell the media to other research groups around the world. Production ultimately warranted building a designated clean room, which the TFL did not have the funding to provide. Instead, Eaves purchased the business from the TFL, creating an independent company with a loan from Western Economic Diversification and a mortgage on his house. STEMCELL Technologies Inc. was launched on July 2, 1993.

In its first year, STEMCELL employed eight people and, selling only cell culture media for growing hematopoietic stem cells, generated $1 million in sales. The company has since seen steady annual growth. STEMCELL has gradually expanded their product portfolio to include immune cell isolation tools as well as products that support research using pluripotent stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells. The company also sells tissue-specific products for use in neural, mammary, prostate, pulmonary, pancreatic, and intestinal cell lineages. STEMCELL’s bioengineering division develops labware and instruments and offers custom assay services.

In March 2015, STEMCELL was named Life Sciences Company of the Year by Life Sciences BC. In June 2015, the company was awarded BIOTECanada’s Biotech Company of the Year award at the Gold Leaf Awards ceremony at the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia. STEMCELL remains the largest biotech company in Canada. Allen Eaves currently serves as the President and CEO.

Brands

AggreWell plates enable the generation of uniformly sized embryoid bodies for the differentiation of embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

ALDEFLUOR is a fluorescent reagent system which uses the activity of the detoxifying enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) to identify, evaluate and isolate ALDH-expressing cells (primarily human stem and progenitor cells from multiple tissues).

ClonaCell is a product line that includes methylcellulose-based cloning media used for cloning mammalian cells to generate stable cell lines, including CHO and hybridoma cell lines. In partnership with Hamilton, STEMCELL produced the ClonaCell EasyPick automated platform for developing mammalian cell lines.

EasySep is a column-free immunomagnetic system for isolating immune cells from a variety of species and sample types. Select antibodies are used to cross-link targeted cells to the magnetic particles in a standard FACs tube, which is placed in an EasySep magnet. The EasySep magnet is then inverted to remove unbound cells, by either positive or negative selection.

EpiCult is a line of species-specific culture media used to support the monolayer culture of human or mouse mammary epithelial cells. EpiCult-B media can assay for the presence of mammary precursor cells using either the mammary colony-forming cell (Ma-CFC) assay or 3D Matrigel-based cultures.

ES-Cult reagents support the maintenance and differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

MammoCult is a medium for the culture and maintenance of human mammospheres from primary mammary tissues and human tumorspheres from breast cancer cell lines.

MegaCult is a collagen-based medium for the growth, detection and quantification of megakaryocyte progenitors.

Methylcellulose-based medium is widely used to detect and quantify hematopoietic progenitor cells in the colony-forming unit (CFU) assay. MethoCult methylcellulose-based media are available in a variety of formulations for several species, including human, mouse and rat. MethoCult™ can be used to: quantitate and characterize hematopoietic progenitors from various samples using CFU assays; quantitate primitive hematopoietic progenitors from LTC-IC assays; evaluate hematopoietic cell growth and differentiation, and screen for new growth factors and/or inhibitors of hematopoiesis; quantitate hematopoietic progenitors following ex vivo expansion or T cell depletion; and test in vitro drug sensitivity of hematopoietic progenitors.

mFreSR is a serum-free cryopreservation medium for human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

mTeSR1 is a highly specialized, serum-free and complete medium designed for the feeder-free culture of human embryonic stem cells (ES cells) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). It is the most-published feeder-free medium for the culture of pluripotent stem cells and has been used to successfully maintain hundreds of derived ES cell and iPS cell lines in 46 countries. It has been shown to maintain pluripotency of pluripotent stem cells after extended periods in culture and can also support the derivation of iPS cells.

MyeloCult is a long-term culture medium used for the maintenance and expansion of hematopoietic progenitor cells.

NeuroCult serum-free media and reagents are available for the culture and characterization of primary neurons, neural stem cells and brain tumor stem cells.

PneumaCult-ALI is a medium for the mucociliary differentiation of human bronchial epithelial cells at the air-liquid interface.

ProstaCult is a medium for the culture, identification and quantification of mouse prostate epithelial progenitor cells.

RoboSep is a fully automated immune cell isolation instrument launched by STEMCELL Technologies in 2005. The machine uses a robotic pipetting arm to carry out cell isolation protocols, and can label and separate as many as four samples of cells simultaneously. A new product recently developed by STEMCELL Technologies can separate as many as 16 samples simultaneously

RosetteSep is an immune cell isolation system that cross-links unwanted cells to red blood cells, forming immunorosettes. These immunorosettes pellet when centrifuged over a density gradient medium, leaving untouched target cells at the plasma:density gradient medium interface.

SepMate is a tube that allows for the isolation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) by density gradient centrifugation. The tube contains an insert that prevents the mixing of the density gradient medium and blood.

STEMdiff media and reagents are designed for the directed differentiation of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to ectodermal, endodermal and mesodermal lineages.

STEMvision is a bench-top instrument and computer system designed specifically for automated imaging and counting of hematopoietic colonies in colony-forming unit (CFU) assays of human cord blood, bone marrow and mobilized peripheral blood cells. This system has been optimized for use with MethoCult media and meniscus-free SmartDish cultureware. Instead of manually identifying and counting colonies using a microscope, the user simply loads a SmartDish culture plate into STEMvision. The instrument then captures an image of each 35 mm well in approximately 30 seconds, and uses image analysis software to identify and classify colonies produced by the four major sub-types of hematopoietic progenitor cells: CFU-E, BFU-E, CFU-G/M/GM and CFU-GEMM.

StemAdhere is a defined matrix used for the maintenance of human embryonic and induced stem cells in a feeder-free environment. It is developed and manufactured by Primorigen Biosciences

StemSpan serum-free media are designed for the culture and expansion of human and mouse hematopoietic cells from cord blood, bone marrow and mobilized peripheral blood.

TeSR-E8 is a feeder-free culture medium for human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, which contains only the eight most essential components required for the maintenance of these cells. The medium is based on a formula developed by Dr. James Thomson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who also developed the formula for mTeSR1.