Frenchman Christophe Weber manages the biggest Japanese pharmaceutical company, Takeda. At the end of last week, he announced a 10-year joint venture with the research unit run by Professor Yamanaka, the 2012 Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine, for his discovery of iPS cells.
Takeda will finance the projects of the CiRA (Center for iPS Cell Research Application) laboratory to the tune of €155 million to “jointly develop clinical applications with induced pluripotent cells”. There are numerous potential clinical applications for iPS in cardiac and neurological disorders as well as in improving diabetes and cancer treatments.
“The joint venture should make a significant contribution to science and the clinical application of iPs cells – an area requiring a considerable amount of time, effort and investment”, announced the two new partners.
La dépêche pointed out that “the use of iPS cells does not pose any fundamental ethical problem unlike stem cells collected from human embryos”.
AFP (17/04/2015); News medical (17/04/2015)