Asymmetrex is led by James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D., an award winning and highly respected scientist. Dr. Sherley founded Asymmetrex in October 2013. The company was originally named The Adult Stem Cell Technology Center, as a continuation of the academic research center that he established as a Senior Scientist at Boston Biomedical Research Institute in 2009.
Asymmetrex Adult Stem Cell Medicine Patents
Asymmetrex has produced a diverse portfolio of adult stem cell medicine patents and pending patent applications for new technologies for mass-producing diverse types of human adult stem cells, and for identifying them and their mature cell derivatives. The expanded adult stem cells retain their ability to produce their respective functional human tissues cells, allowing mass-production of a wide array of human cells for research, pre-clinical studies, and clinical applications.
These cell technologies and stem cell patents are the outgrowth of the research of the Asymmetrex’s Director, Dr. James L. Sherley. They are the culmination of twenty years of research led by Dr. Sherley at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most recently the Boston Biomedical Research Institute. In recognition of the superior innovation of this research, in 2006, Dr. Sherley received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award. Under Dr. Sherley’s directorship, Asymmetrex will work with life science companies to craft these novel technologies to address their specific barriers to commercialization of human cell products and applications.
Invest with Asymmetrex
As a private for-profit biotechnology start-up company, Asymmetrex provides unique investment opportunities for individuals and institutions who seek to invest in ventures to improve human health and medical care. Asymmetrex is currently pursuing two primary commercialization plans:
- AlphaSTEM Technology
In partnership with AlphaSTAR Corporation, Asymmetrex is currently developing a first-of-its-kind computer simulation technology that can estimate the number and determine the function of adult tissue stem cells in essentially any human organ or tissue. It is now evaluating investments to support the development of the new “AlphaSTEM” technology to reduce the cost and time required to discover safer effective drugs in the $50 billion drug development industry.
- Human Adult Liver Stem Cell Biomanufacturing
Asymmetrex has the vision of increasing the production of human adult tissue stem cells and their mature cell derivatives to manufacturing scales. Employing its suppression of asymmetric cell kinetics (SACK) technology, the company projects that it can engineer a manufacturing process capable of weekly production of trillions (i.e., pounds) of human adult tissue stem cells or their differentiated derivatives.
The first commercialization targets are human adult liver stem cells and their differentiated derivatives that possess properties of mature liver cells (i.e., hepatocytes). Success in this undertaking would supply the $2 billion market for liver failure therapies, as well as the $2 billion pharmaceutical drug evaluation market. Asymmetrex is currently evaluating prospective development and investment partners to achieve this vision of human liver cell bio-manufacturing. Succeeding with liver opens the door for next-generation bio-manufacturing processes for pancreatic stem cells for diabetes therapies and hair follicle stem cells for innovation in skin and hair loss treatments.
Tissue Stem Cell Expansion Optimization
Asymmetrex helps design procedures that will improve the degree and efficiency of adult tissue stem cell expansion for cell therapy applications. It also offers a contract service for specifically counting diverse adult tissue stem cells and related applications for stem cell science and stem cell medicine. If your need involves determining the quantity or quality of adult tissue stem cells, Asymmetrex will be able to address it.
- Counting: Determine the specific number and cell kinetics properties of adult tissue stem cells in research samples.
- Dosing: Determine the specific dose and quality of therapeutic adult tissue stem cells (e.g., umbilical cord blood stem cells), including for veterinary medicine.
- Drug Safety: Identify stem cell-toxic drug candidates, which often cause chronic organ failure, a major cause of drug candidate failure.
- Drug Efficacy: Identify drug candidates that improve adult tissue stem cell efficacy for transplantation medicine.
- Monitoring: Monitor changes in the number of adult tissue stem cells (e.g., mesenchymal stem cells) during expansion procedures.
- SC Factors: Identify growth factors and other agents that increase the degree of adult tissue stem cell expansion for cell therapy applications.
- Toxicology: Evaluate environmental toxicants for either toxic or carcinogenic effects on adult tissue stem cells.
Meet the Founder and Director
James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D.
As its founder and current Director, Dr. Sherley leads Asymmetrex with a mission of advancing emerging adult stem cell tissue technologies to applications in clinical drug discovery and cellular medicine. Asymmetrex is the developer and holder of a rich portfolio of recently issued patents for biotechnologies for the quantification and production of human adult tissue stem cells.
Dr. Sherley is a graduate from Harvard College in 1980 with a B.A. degree in biology. He completed a joint M.D. and Ph.D. program from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988. After post-doctoral studies at Princeton University, he joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia as a principal investigator in 1991. In 1998, he moved to the faculty at the Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he pursued the new discipline of adult stem cell biological engineering. Dr. Sherley has won numerous awards and accolades, including the 1993 Pew Scholars in Biomedical Research Award, the 2003 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Aging Research, and the 2006 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Dr. Sherley has spent twenty years in regenerative biology and stem cell medicine fields. He has focused on elucidating mechanisms responsible for the specialized renewal properties of adult stem cells and using this knowledge to address major research problems limiting the development of adult stem cells for biomedicine.
“We are a life sciences biotechnology company with a focus on innovating adult stem cell medicine technology that will advance the potential of adult tissue stem cells into routine medical practice.”