GE Healthcare and Cellular Dynamics agree licensing deal for cellular assays

GE Healthcare has announced a new sublicensing agreement with Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) pertaining to the development of new cellular assays.

Under the terms of the deal, GE Healthcare has licensed CDI to develop, manufacture and sell cellular assays and models derived from induced pluripotent stem cells for use in drug discovery and toxicity screening.

It follows on from a recent intellectual property rights agreement between GE Healthcare and assay developer Geron and strengthens the company's efforts to accelerate the creation of new pharmaceutical products.

CDI is responsible for the sale of iCell cardiomyocytes, neurons, endothelial cells and hepatocytes, as well as the custom cell manufacturing service MyCell.

Dr Amr Abid, general manager for cell technologies at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: "It is important that stem cell-based assays are available to researchers so that progress can be made in drug discovery; clarity and freedom to operate is fundamental to advancing the use of such assays."

This also comes after GE Healthcare agreed to assist Merck Sharp and Dohme in carrying out a clinical trial of a new Alzheimer's disease drug earlier this month.