Engineered pancreatic endocrine cells that report beta cell toxicity for use in high throughput screening applications

Regenerative Medical Solutions, Inc., Chicago IL

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Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract The prevalence of diabetes in the United States and world-wide is increasing dramatically, and new drugs that can protect or restore the function of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells are urgently needed. For decades, drug discovery efforts in this space have been hampered by the lack of consistent and abundant human beta cells for drug screening. The advent of beta cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), as pioneered by Regenerative Medical Solutions (RMS), has opened an era of making readily available beta cells a reality for performing high-throughput screening (HTS) of compound libraries. Considerable market research, including direct customer feedback, has indicated that HTS applications remain expensive and laborious when conducting screening assays of compound libraries to detect insulin, which currently rely upon antibody-based methods such as immunofluorescence microscopy and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). To further enhance the efficiency of screening thousands of compound libraries for diabetes drug discovery, RMS will engineer iPSC lines for use in HTS assays. Such engineered beta cell products will express a luciferase-green fluorescent protein fusion under the control of the human insulin promoter. This fusion protein, which can be detected by inexpensive and easily automated assays, will enable iPSC-derived beta cells, packaged in RMS? HTS product platforms, to be a truly accurate, efficient, and cost-effective tool in high-throughput drug screening applications. Direct customer feedback has led to this proposal and addresses their specific utility requirements for performing HTS applications.