Human induced pluripotent stem cells have risen to the forefront as a revolutionary resource, within the realm of biomedical and life science research. 

At ReadyStemCells, we provide researchers and principal investigators with high-quality, patient-specific iPSCs from a diverse population of donors. We complement our generated iPSCs with a comprehensive report of stemness and quality assessment, suitable for all high-caliber research publications. Our iPSC lines are selected to meet specific project requirements for cellular function. We offer a wide range of services with competitive pricing, as well as a quicker cell generation turnaround, when compared to other institution-based iPSC facilities in North America.

Our goal is to ensure an efficient and economical pipeline which generates high-quality patient-specific stem cells and enables personalized research in your lab.

There is an increasing prevalence of chronic diseases worldwide, but an underwhelming success rate of new pharmacological development as well as a lack of reproducible disease models

Whether it is in the cardiovascular, the renal or the central nervous systems, there is a lack of consensus on the drug screening protocols currently in place – in many cases, an insufficient number of human cell lines are used in the research phase, rendering it impossible to make pre-clinical predictions on drug success in specific subsets of the population. Consequently, thousands of potential treatments make their way to clinical trials, only to fail prior to approval, which results in excessive expenditure and wasted resources. It also takes patients from 3-10 months to find the drug that is effective and safe for them. This egregious process could be shortened significantly by implementing patient-specific testing prior to drug administration. Currently, there is an unmet need to explore a more effective way to screen, select and evaluate drugs pre-clinically, as well as assess safety. Thus, we are pushing to develop viable and reproducible pre-clinical disease models to reduce the costs of clinical trials and tailor patient care. If your laboratory currently tests novel treatments or medications, our high-quality iPSC lines will offer a reliable testing model for publications and pre-clinical trials.

The key to discovering new therapies and treatments lies in our ability to understand the way a disease develops. As such, disease modelling is crucial in studying the way that our bodies and cells react to disease – we strive to dive deeper into the cellular reasons why some people recover more easily while others struggle to overcome pathological conditions. Our technology provides researchers with a resource to create more reliable patient-specific disease models with lower associated costs – whether you are studying channelopathies, toxicity-induced pathologies, metabolism disorders or developmental dysfunctions at the cellular level, we can help by generating and providing diverse patient iPSCs specifically for your studies.

Organ development and regeneration require an in-depth understanding of the pathways and processes of development. Both also require a high fidelity to the architecture of tissue in vivo. Understanding the developmental phases is crucial for two reasons: 1) to innovate therapies for congenital diseases, and 2) to eventually create transplantable tissues. If you want to recapitulate various mechanisms involved in the development of your organ of interest or look into the determinants of regeneration, iPSCs are a suitable cell source to achieve this goal. Furthermore, organoid research with iPSC-derived cell lines has risen in popularity in recent years in organ development research, due to the iPSCs coming from one unique patient and various protocols being developed in order to generate various cell lineages.

Immunofluorescence - Pluripotency Marker Check

Each generated iPSC line is monitored by two independent researchers, to ensure adequate cellular morphology and high-quality colonies. We ensure that cells have:

large nuclei,
are tightly-packed together and,
colonies have a clear delineation, without any differentiation at the borders.

As a first check, independent clones are seeded and grown in mTeSR Plus media (STEMCELL Technologies, CA) and stained with pluripotency markers NANOG, OCT4, SSEA-4 and TRA-1-60-S.

Representative picture of panel compiled from two patient iPSC lines (blue: Hoechst nuclear marker; green: AlexaFluor 488 secondary antibody; scale bar = 100um). Primary antibodies consist of NANOG (nuclear marker), OCT4 (nuclear marker), Stage-specific embryonic antigen 4 (SSEA-4; cell surface antigen) and TRA-1-60-S (cell surface antigen).

Polymerase Chain Reaction – Pluripotency Marker Check

Representative picture of RT-PCR performed for 6 generated iPSC lines

To confirm the immunofluorescence staining, we perform RT-PCR with the following genes, expressed in embryonic and iPSCs:

SOX2 (231 bp) – transcription factor essential for maintaining self-renewal
Lin28 (122 bp) – RNA-binding protein promoting pluripotency
NANOG (270 bp) – transcriptional factor suppressing cell determination factors
TDG1 (140 bp) – Pluripotency protein coding gene
Oct3/4 (190 bp) – pluripotency transcription factor
DPPB5 (215 bp) – developmental pluripotency-associated protein
GAPDH (414 bp) – housekeeping gene

Trilineage Differentiation Assay Check

Representative picture of panel compiled from two patient iPSC lines generated via electroporation of episomal vectors (blue: Hoechst nuclear marker; red: AlexaFluor 488 secondary antibody; scale bar = 50um)

To ensure high-quality differentiation for the purpose of your experiments, we perform a trilineage differentiation assay (R&D Systems) on all of our iPSC lines, at the very last step prior to freezing. Through this, you will have the assurance that your iPSCs will differentiate into your cell lineage of interest.

Mycoplasma Testing

Mycoplasma is a bacteria that commonly is found contaminating mammalian cell cultures – this can significantly impact cellular integrity and function, as well as results and conclusions of experiments. We test our generated iPSC cultures via the MycoSEQ Mycoplasma Detection System, a real-time PCR based mycoplasma detection assay (ThermoFisher), to provide assurance of a contaminant-free iPSC sample.

Are you interested in transitioning towards iPSC research? Are you looking to test novel therapies developed in your lab, on a specific cell lineage? The experts on our team are eager to assist you in helping decide your next steps, at any stage of your research.

Toxicity and Effect Screening

If your research requires a large number of reagents to be tested pre-clinically prior to moving on to trials or approval, our selection of iPSCs is an easily expandable source of cells which you can differentiate according to your preferred protocol. Overall, iPSC-derived cells can be cultured in 2D or 3D arrangements. Large-scale arrays can be performed on iPSC-derived differentiated cells, to allow you to draw accurate conclusions and assessments of product toxicity in vitro.

Drug Testing on Wider Population

If you have developed a unique drug and want to test its effects in a large and diverse in vitro population, we have a large biobank of iPSCs derived from patients of the McGill University Health Centre. You can glean crucial information on population-wide effects of your novel treatment by using multiple cell lines derived from different patients. You can purchase smaller quantities of iPSCs per vial, with a large and diverse donor population. Please contact us for more information for iPSC bulk purchases.

Disease Modelling & Development

If you are working on developing an accurate disease model in 2D or 3D cultures, we provide frozen iPSCs as well as consulting services on various differentiation techniques. In stock, we currently have patient samples derived from healthy donors as well as cardiomyopathic patients. All patient history is recorded and preserved for research purposes.

AnteA is a Montreal-based biomedical healthcare company focused on giving everyone access to the future of cell-based medicine with cryopreservation and stem cell generation facilities. Our services are offered via in-clinic collection of patient blood – a simple and non-invasive procedure that takes less than 5 minutes for patients, and approximately 3 months of turnaround for iPSC generation. We are a team of highly-specialized dedicated researchers and clinicians united by our passion for personalized healthcare, tailored treatment as well as an increased accessibility to stem cells.

The team of researchers, students and staff is within the research arm of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine and Sciences at McGill University.

It is ranked as the 1st biomedical and healthcare research centre in Quebec, with 8 research programs and 9 research platforms as well as world-class specialized staff for consultation purposes.

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