Rebirthel Co., Ltd.

We are a part of the "Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) pavilion.

Our Technology Offers

“Off-the-shelf T cells” produced from the iPS cells

Recently, it has been shown that T lymphocytes can serve as effective therapeutic tools for cancer. In adoptive T cell therapy, T lymphocytes are collected from a patient’s peripheral blood, and after the expansion process, they are autologously administered back to the patient. However, such strategies using “autologous” T cells have the following issues:

  1. long preparatory period for transplant where it typically takes months to prepare patients for transplant procedures
  2. heterogeneity due to uneven quality of T cells derived from patients
  3. costly

The technology is targeted to overcome the above challenges associated with adoptive T cell therapy through the approach of a universal, off-the-shelf killer T cell medicine. The main target diseases are cancer and viral infections. This strategy of universal T cells leverages on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which exhibit low risk of host rejection, thereby allowing therapy options universally available to all patients.

The technology involves the large-scale production and subsequent cryopreservation of T cells. When needed, T cells will be thawed and administered to patients. Moreover, a mass production will make it possible for achieving cost efficiency. The technology provider hopes to provide cancer patients or patients having viral infections readily available access to T cell therapy.

The technology and its associated patents are currently licensed to a pharmaceutical company for the scope of use restricted to specific target antigens. The technology provider is seeking potential licensees for other target antigens.