2022 Development Award Winners

RoosterBio’s 2022 Development Award aims to support North American and European investigators who share our common goals in emerging hMSC and exosome-based therapeutics by providing select innovative study proposals up to $10,000 in RoosterBio products over a 12-month period. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their interesting applications to this year’s award.

To date, RoosterBio has awarded over $100K to support multiple academic initiatives including those receiving previous development awards.  These have enabled work across the Advanced Therapy landscape, including regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, exosomes and EV therapy, hMSC bioprocessing, and cell-based gene modification. RoosterBio’s cell and media systems enabled those labs and hundreds of other researchers to spend less time culturing cells and more time focused on their applications, leading to accelerated publication in high-impact journals and grant development.

This year’s award recipients include:

  • Dr. Shirley O’Dea and Dr. Karen English – Biology Department, Maynooth University
    • Project Title: Non-viral genetic engineering with Crispr Cas9 RNPs for the manufacture of hypoimmunogenic MSCs
  • Stefania Bruno – Department of Medical Sciences, University of Torino
    • Giovanni Camussi Group
    • Project Title: Evaluation of the anti-fibrotic activity of extra-cellular vesicles derived from different stem cell sources in a 3D-culture system
  • Tanja Jasmin Kutzner, PhD – Transfusion Medicine, University Hospital Essen
    • Bernd Giebel Group
    • Project Title: Scaled production of EVs from clinically immortalized MSCs
  • Pedro Silva Couto, PhD – Biochemical Engineering Department, University College London
    • Qasim Rafiq Group – Cell and Gene Therapy Bioprocessing
    • Project Title: Scalable manufacturing of extracellular vesicles from gene-edited hMSCs for therapeutic applications

RoosterBio first launched the hMSC Development Grant in 2018 to engage the advanced cell and EV/exosome therapy research community with standardized, highly engineered hMSC bioprocess systems. These systems have built-in design to streamline not just product development, but also to accelerate manufacturing processes for projects en route to early-stage clinical development.

We look forward to next year’s award!