- Cellulite may not be that superfluous.
- In Toulouse, in the brand new Institute of Adult Stem Cells and Regeneration (Incere), the teams want to make it an asset in cell therapy.
- The fatty tissue thus used could lower the cost of the treatments.
Crohn's disease, Alzheimer's or osteoarthritis could be treated tomorrow thanks to cell therapy, like what is already done for certain leukemias. But this time the stem cells used to restore damaged tissue or organ would come from adipose tissue, in other words from the fat source of our overweight.
An innovative track at the heart of the research carried out at the brand new Institute of Adult Stem Cells and Regeneration (Incere), a 3,500 m2 building inaugurated on Wednesday on the Toulouse Oncopôle site by the Occitanie region and the Establishment French blood.
Listen, protect, develop: @ Occitanie supports research for the medicine of the future while being useful to patients.
In #Toulouse @ EFS_Sante has a new place dedicated to research on stem cells & regenerationpress (INCERE) which strengthens the Oncopole. pic.twitter.com/ox7WRoad99
"We want to make fat a positive source for treatment," says Professor Louis Casteilla with a smile, whose STROMAlab teams, installed in the brand new building, are working on the repairing role of these cells from fatty tissue.
“Today, for example, a clinical trial is underway to treat critical ischemia of the lower limbs which results in gangrene. When you have tissue damage, this initially results in inflammation. These cells can act on and on the reconstruction of tissues. But they are not magic cells, they act in a specific context, "says the researcher who is participating in clinical trials of these advanced therapy drugs (ITNs).
On neighboring benches, the employees of the start-up Cell-Easy are also working on these famous stem cells, recovered from adipose tissue after cosmetic surgery instead of being thrown in the trash.
One donor for multiple recipients
Its objective is to manage to set up a "cell production factory". “Today, the process is autologous, the cell donor is also the recipient. But this is expensive and does not pass economically. We have used it to make it allogeneic, so there can be one donor and hundreds of recipients. We collect stem cells to make them proliferate, we freeze them and distribute them ”, explains Pierre Monsan, CEO of Cell-Easy. The latter hopes to pass the various validation phases to succeed within three to five years.
By multiplying cells like breads, we could reduce the costs of regenerative medicine. Because today, for a single dose of treatment you have to pay between 30,000 and 50,000 euros. And this sometimes leads to scandals like that of Novartis at the end of the year which proposed to draw 100 babies by lot to offer them its treatment at two million euros per injection.
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