Innovation environment for personalised cell therapies

VISION

Why IndiCell?

Sweden has traditionally had a long-standing and internationally leading role in the development of new therapies and medical interventions. The field is now entering a new era of precision medicine and advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). Despite significant initiatives and investments, there is still a lack of national infrastructure and pooled expertise to develop and manufacture ATMPs in Sweden. Instead, large parts of the returns from Swedish innovations and government-funded research are generated abroad – which is high time to change. Sweden now needs to regain and maintain a leading role, in order to offer new treatments and cures based on cell and gene therapy. The development of national workflows and competences for such manufacturing needs to be accelerated.

Particularly promising in these efforts are cell therapies based on pluripotent stem cells. As such stem cells have the potential to develop into all cell types in the human body, precise and targeted therapies to replace different types of damaged or diseased cells are possible. This could potentially stop or reverse diseases such as diabetes, spinal cord injuries, heart failure, Parkinson’s disease and age-related macular degeneration.

Advanced cell therapies are expected not only to reduce healthcare costs in the short term, but also in the long term by significantly improving the natural history of disease treatment.

Over a 5-10 year period, cell therapies are likely to:

1. Significantly reduce the need for patients to use drug therapies and later invasive therapies needed to treat their side effects.
2. Reduce patient morbidity and mortality and enable longer working lives, thereby creating cost-efficiency and economic benefits for society.