Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company,  has signed an agreement with Celgene Cellular Therapeutics (CCT) to licence, develop, and co-promote Celgene’s proprietary placental cell population, PSC-100.

HLI has the option to explore a variety of applications for this unique cell population, including for sarcopenia, a condition associated with aging characterised by degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass, quality, and strength. Celgene has also made an equity investment in HLI.

HLI will use its vast expertise and technology to sequence and characterize PSC-100 at the molecular level to complement data Celgene has gleaned from PSC-100 in phase 1 human studies.

“We think that cellular based therapeutics combined with our genomics based discovery systems offer exciting potential for age-related diseases,” said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., HLI chief executive officer, and co-founder.  “PSC-100 provides an advanced basis of testing cell therapy for diseases like sarcopenia,” he concluded.

HLI’s primary business is focussed on building the world’s most comprehensive human genotype and phenotype database to tackle the diseases associated with aging-related human biological decline. Given that stem cells are an important component to understanding and unlocking many insights into human biology and human disease, the company is also exploring development of cell-based therapeutics to address age-related decline in endogenous stem cell function.

HLI’s work is premised on the theory that as the human body ages many biological changes occur, including substantial changes and degradation to the genome of the differentiated, specialised cells found in all body tissues. There is also a depletion and degradation of healthy regenerative stem cell populations in the body over time. In addition to its own work in stem cells the agreement with CCT offers HLI another immediate and important avenue for research and development in stem cells and cellular therapeutics.

HLI’s Co-Founder, Robert Hariri,  who is also chairman, founder, chief scientific officer and former chief executive officer of CCT, is a pioneer in the use of stem cells to treat a variety of life threatening diseases. Dr. Hariri and his team were the first to discover and characterise pluripotent stem cells from the placenta and also developed PSC-100.

HLI, a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, CA was founded in 2013 by pioneers in the fields of genomics and stem cell therapy. Using advances in genomic sequencing, the human microbiome, proteomics, informatics, computing, and cell therapy technologies, HLI is building the world’s most comprehensive database of human genotypes and phenotypes as a basis for a variety of commercialisation opportunities to help solve aging related disease and human biological decline. HLI will be licensing access to its database, and developing new diagnostics and therapeutics as part of their product offerings.

Celgene Cellular Therapeutics (CCT), a Celgene Group of companies is a leader in cell therapy and regenerative medicine, pioneering the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for unmet medical needs.