Cellino, Matricelf Team Up to Scale Personalized Spinal Cord Injury Treatments

Cellino and Matricelf are pooling resources to accelerate the global biomanufacturing of personalized spinal cord injury treatments using the former’s Nebula technology and the latter’s breakthrough regenerative approach. The collaboration combines Cellino’s automated iPSC manufacturing with Matricelf’s double autologous 3D differentiation process, paving the way for scalable, patient-specific regenerative therapies, according to both companies.

“Collaboration on this international scale is a vital step toward our vision of a fully autologous regenerative therapy for spinal cord injury,” Matricelf CEO Gil Hakim said. “Matricelf’s platform, in combination with Cellino’s Nebula technology, is setting new standards in scalable patient-specific tissue engineering, bringing us closer to real-world applications of regenerative medicine.”

Nebula, Cellino’s proprietary closed-cassette biomanufacturing system, is designed to produce high-quality induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) at scale with consistency and sterility. The innovation allows for on-demand, contamination-free iPSC production, bringing regenerative medicine closer to real-world clinical application.

As a key milestone, Cellino has successfully manufactured and delivered autologous iPSC lines from four donors to Matricelf, a biotech company developing regenerative therapies for spinal cord injury. Matricelf’s approach integrates an extracellular matrix-based hydrogel derived from the patient’s own omentum, facilitating precise cell differentiation and tissue formation while eliminating the need for immunosuppression.

Matricelf has now transformed Cellino-generated iPSCs into functional neural tissues, demonstrating synchronized electrical activity—a hallmark of functional neural networks. Rigorous industry-standard assays confirmed key neural characteristics, including genetic and protein neural marker expression of engineered tissues with Cellino’s iPSCs, with results comparable to Matricelf’s own iPSC-derived tissues.

With the goal of redefining treatment paradigms for spinal cord injury, Matricelf plans to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application next year to bring its autologous iPSC-derived therapy into clinical trials. This transformative approach addresses an urgent unmet need, potentially restoring function for millions of patients worldwide.

“The ability to produce high-quality, patient-specific iPSCs at scale is poised to revolutionize regenerative medicine,” Cellino Co-Founder/Chief Product Officer Marinna Madrid, Ph.D., stated. “Our collaboration with Matricelf exemplifies how international collaboration can accelerate innovation and expand access to life-changing therapies.”

Cambridge, Mass.-based Cellino develops advanced biomanufacturing technology.

Matricelf is a biotechnology company developing a platform for autologous tissue engineering for various medical conditions. The company was established in 2019 by Professor Tal Dvir from the Laboratory of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine from Tel Aviv University (Israel).