Credibility, Cash, and Capability: The Benefits of Strategic Partnership, with Brian Culley, Lineage Cell Therapeutics

Click here to watch the video version of this podcast.

Brian Culley, CEO of Lineage Cell Therapeutics, describes his company’s approach as “replace and restore.”

In certain settings, replacing whole cells may provide restorative benefits that go beyond small molecule drugs, or even anti-VEGF therapies.

Replacing dysfunctional or lost cell types with manufactured cells of the same type can restore activity. That means a potential reversal of disease progression rather than a slower road to vision loss.

Lineage has taken this approach to develop a treatment for dry AMD. OpRegen is in a Phase IIa clinical trial to evaluate the cell therapy in patients with geographic atrophy secondary to AMD. OpRegen replaces the layer of damaged retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells with manufactured RPE cells via a single, 30-minute procedure.

With host Rob Rothman, MD, Culley shares Lineage’s two-step allogenic cell production process and how the company applies it to ophthalmology. They also discuss how this process got the attention of Roche and other strategic partners—a rare win for a cell therapy company.

Listen to the podcast today to discover:
• More about Culley’s background, which includes several years in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, as well as technology licensing and business. That diversity in experience helps him evaluate Lineage’s path forward from multiple perspectives.
• The details behind Lineage’s approach: how it arrives at indication-specific stem cells and how its process differs from stem cell therapy.
• Why therapies that use undifferentiated stem cells deliver mixed results, but as the first step in a process, pluripotent stem cell lines have benefits.
• Why Lineage’s approach to cell therapy is especially useful for dry AMD, which is characterized by a loss in RPE cells
• Brian’s thoughts on how the FDA approval of Syfovre (Apellis Pharmaceuticals) resets the bar for emerging dry AMD therapies.
• How the partnership between Lineage Therapeutics and Roche came to be and what makes both parties ideal partners.

[Press Play]

Resources
Lineage Cell Therapeutics https://lineagecell.com/
OpRegen https://lineagecell.com/products-pipeline/opregen/
Rob Rothman, MD https://ois.net/robert-rothman-md/