Asterias Biotherapeutics Announces New Exclusive License Agreement with The Regents of the University of California

Asterias Biotherapeutics (NYSE:AST), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing cell-based therapeutics to treat neurological conditions associated with demyelination and cellular immunotherapies to treat cancer, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with The Regents of the University of California.

As quoted in the press release:

Under the agreement, the Company has exclusive rights in all fields of use for a patent family that claims a method of improving recovery in a patient that has suffered an ischemic stroke by administering to the patient stem cell-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells.  The pending patent applications in the US, Canada, China, Japan, Australia, and before the European Patent Organization that are included in the exclusive license were filed after initial testing of AST-OPC1, the Company’s pluripotent stem cell derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cell product, in a rodent model of white matter ischemia in collaboration with Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, M.D., Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”).  The pending patents are jointly owned by The Regents of The University of California and Asterias, with The Regents granting the Company an exclusive license to its share of the IP rights.

The exclusive license agreement with the Regents of the University of California is a part of the Company’s strategy to explore the efficacy of its AST-OPC1 product candidate in other neurological conditions.  AST-OPC1 is currently in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial in severe spinal cord injury (NCT02302157).

Click here to read the full press release.