10 January 2019 - - US-based drug developer AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) has published data relating to its cell therapy product candidate AgeX-BAT1 for Type II diabetes and obesity in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cell Research and Therapy, the company said.

Scientists now realize that the activity of brown adipose tissue, also known as "brown" or "good" fat, is markedly lost with age.

This loss may contribute to metabolic disturbances seen in Type II diabetes and obesity as well as a heightened cardiovascular risk. 

AgeX-BAT1 is comprised of regenerative cells capable of becoming BAT and is intended to return BAT levels back to those found in young adults. AgeX is targeting Type II diabetes and obesity as they are areas of high unmet medical need and present multi-bn-dollar market opportunities.

As described in the paper, "Clonal Derivation of White and Brown Adipocyte Progenitor Cell Lines from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells," two AgeX-BAT1 cell lines, designated NP88 and NP110, were selected for detailed characterisation.

The data demonstrate AgeX's PureStem cell therapy manufacturing platform was successful in generating highly purified cells with precise anatomical identity, and most importantly, capable of potently expressing definitive markers of BAT cells, including active adipokines such as adiponectin.

Adiponectin is reported to have beneficial effects in patients with age-related metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

In addition, the paper provides evidence that AgeX's PureStem technology allows for the reliable re-derivation of scalable lots of desired cells.

AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) is focused on developing and commercialising innovative therapeutics for human aging.

Its PureStem and UniverCyte manufacturing and immunotolerance technologies are designed to work together to generate highly defined, universal, allogeneic, off-the-shelf pluripotent stem cell-derived young cells of any type for application in a whole host of diseases with a high unmet medical need.

AgeX has two preclinical cell therapy programmes: AGEX-VASC1 (vascular progenitor cells) for tissue ischemia and AGEX-BAT1 (brown fat cells) for Type II diabetes. AgeX's revolutionary longevity platform named induced Tissue Regeneration aims to unlock cellular immortality and regenerative capacity to reverse age-related changes within tissues.

AGEX-iTR1547 is an iTR-based formulation in preclinical development. HyStem is AgeX's delivery technology to stably engraft PureStem cell therapies and slowly release iTR molecules in the body.

AgeX is developing its core product pipeline for use in the clinic to extend human healthspan, and is seeking opportunities to form licensing and partnership agreements around its broad IP estate and proprietary technology platforms for non-core clinical applications.