Sigma® Life Science Launches Novel, Affordable Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture Medium

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sigma-Aldrich^® Corporation (Nasdaq: SIAL) announced today that Sigma Life Science, its innovative biological products and services research business, has launched Stemline^® Pluripotent Culture Medium, a novel human pluripotent stem cell culture medium that provides a consistent environment for the long-term maintenance and growth of healthy pluripotent stem cells. The new medium performs equivalently to the industry's leading medium and provides academic and pharmaceutical stem cell research labs with a substantially lower cost alternative to higher priced media. Additional information and sample requests of the Stemline Pluripotent Culture Medium are available at www.sigma.com/stemlinepsc.

"The exorbitant cost of media for pluripotent stem cells is a universal complaint from the stem cell research community. Our Stemline Pluripotent Culture Medium performs equivalently to the leading medium for maintaining pluripotency and optimal growth rates, and is produced more efficiently than traditional media, resulting in lower costs. For example, a typical academic lab that consumes three 500 mL bottles of media per week could save at least $12,000 annually using our new Stemline medium. A high-throughput pharmaceutical development team that consumes 20 liters of media weekly could save more than $160,000 annually," said John Listello, Market Segment Manager for Regenerative Medicine at Sigma Life Science.

Culturing pluripotent stem cells can be challenging as many media's undefined, heterogenous mixtures can cause inconsistent growth rates and undesired spontaneous differentiation. The Stemline Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture Medium is serum-free, composed of fully-defined components and has 80% less basic fibroblast growth factor than the leading pluripotent stem cell culture medium. This provides a consistent environment for long-term maintenance of optimal growth rates, viability and pluripotency. Rigorous characterization of the Stemline Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture Medium has demonstrated that cultured pluripotent stem cells display all established pluripotency markers and maintain proper karyotype and the ability to differentiate into each of the three germ layers. The feeder-independent medium also enables culturing with synthetic matricies, thereby eliminating a source of variability that would prohibit later clinical applications.

"Academic and pharmaceutical groups performing toxicology screens, disease-specific stem cell research or studies of the basic mechanisms behind pluripotency and differentiation depend upon a steady supply of consistent, high-performance cell culture medium. This novel Stemline medium extends Sigma's existing position as one of the largest global providers of cell culture media," said Listello.

Existing Stemline stem cell culture media include specialized formulations for expansion of six human adult stem cell and progenitor cell types: hematopoietic, neural, dendritic, mesenchymal, T-cells, and keratinocytes. These six Stemline media are produced under good manufacturing practices (GMP) and have Device Master File certificates from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Sigma Life Science's comprehensive stem cell product portfolio includes custom iPS cell CompoZr^® ZFN-mediated genetic engineering, Stemgent^® Reprogramming Lentiviruses, the MISSION^® shRNA Library with the latest content release from The RNAi Consortium, 3D matrices, growth factors, small molecules, other cell culture media and the industry's most validated antibodies. Sigma Life Science acquired a worldwide license to Kyoto University's iPS cell patent portfolio in February, 2012.

For more information and to request pricing, visit www.sigma.com/stemlinepsc.

Cautionary Statement: The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "could," "could expect," "can be," "predictive" or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from products derived there from. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that pluripotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cell media, or related custom services will assist the Company to achieve any particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding products associated with pluripotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cell media, or related custom services could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company's assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich's current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Sigma Life Science: Sigma Life Science is a Sigma-Aldrich business that represents the Company's leadership in innovative biological products and services for the global life science market and offers an array of biologically-rich products and reagents that researchers use in scientific investigation. Product areas include biomolecules, genomics and functional genomics, cells and cell-based assays, transgenics, protein assays, stem cell research, epigenetics and custom services/oligonucleotides. Sigma Life Science also provides an extensive range critical bioessentials like biochemicals, antibiotics, buffers, carbohydrates, enzymes, forensic tools, hematology and histology, nucleotides, amino acids and their derivatives, and cell culture media.

About Sigma-Aldrich:  Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company whose biochemical, organic chemical products, kits and services are used in scientific research, including genomic and proteomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components in pharmaceutical, diagnostics and high technology manufacturing. Sigma-Aldrich customers include more than 1.3 million scientists and technologists in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals and industry. The Company operates in 38 countries and has nearly 9,100 employees whose objective is to provide excellent service worldwide. Sigma-Aldrich is committed to accelerating customer success through innovation and leadership in Life Science and High Technology. For more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its website at www.sigma-aldrich.com.

Sigma-Aldrich and Sigma are trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Co, LLC registered in the US and other countries. CompoZr, MISSION and Stemline are registered trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC. 

Stemgent is a registered trademark of Stemgent, Inc.

SOURCE Sigma-Aldrich Corporation