Cell therapies : do we need more relaxed or more stringent regulations ?

Cell therapies : do we need more relaxed or more stringent regulations ?

Involved in the acquitision of Bluerock Therapeutics by Bayer in 2019, as Investment Director, Alasdair Thong is a Venture Partner with a strong expertise in iPS-derived cell therapies. We asked him about cell quality and current regulatory standards…

Transcript

 

The pharma industry has been historically working with drugs, then with proteins – antibodies – cells to some extent, and now moving into real products, and as you said there is obviously more scrutiny on the quality of what you do. Because the cells are going to stay into the body of…- They’ll even become you, eventually. Like, the DNA that you put in those cells will become you, even if it is part of you already, right ? So with you completely.

I think to that point you know it’s the responsibility, and the regulatory pathways for all of these things need to be very stringent as well, right ? I think all of us in this space are not asking for more relaxed regulations.

It has to be very high and if we beat that barrier, it means that actually people can genuinely trust that it will work – number one – and number two, that we’re the right actors to be pushing it forwards.