Asymmetrex is a life sciences biotechnology company with a focus on innovating technologies that will advance the potential of perinatal and postnatal tissue stem cells into routine medical practice. Tissue stem cells are found in the bodies of children and adults. They are a minute fraction of the cells (less than 1 per 1000) that make up organs and tissues like the liver, cornea, skin, muscles, hair, brain, bone marrow, and umbilical cord blood. Despite their small fraction, they are responsible for continuously renewing and repairing the body.

A long-standing challenge in stem cell biomedicine has been the lack of a means to count tissue stem cells specifically and determine their specific dose for stem cell transplantation therapies. Because tissue stem cells are a minor fraction of tissue cells, even in the best enriched populations, and there are no known biomarkers that recognize tissue stem cells specifically, previously it has not been possible to count therapeutic tissue stem cells. Asymmetrex now offers the AlphaSTEM Test^TM for this purpose.

Asymmetrex’s AlphaSTEM Test^TM is the first and only technology that provides specific and accurate counting of any human tissue stem cell in complex tissue cell preparations. It can be used to determine the dose of therapeutic tissue stem cells like hematopoietic stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells. It can be use to monitor and optimize tissue stem cell number in manufacturing processes. It can be used to identify agents that affect tissue stem cell function and viability either positively or negatively. In the latter case, the AlphaSTEM Test^TM provides the unique advantage of earlier identification of drug candidates that will fail later in clinical trials or post-marketing because of causing chronic organ failure (e.g., bone marrow or hepatic). This is possible because of the test’s ability to detect stem cell-specific toxicity in primary cell cultures of any proliferative human tissue. Tissue stem cell toxicity is a major cause of chronic organ failure by drug candidates.