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Biotech Partnership Targets Safer Transplants for Blood and Bone Disorders

Bio Tech

Business Honor
21 May, 2025

MCRI and Retro Biosciences join forces to advance personalized stem cell transplant treatments.

A major biotech partnership promises new hope for people with leukemia, bone marrow failure, and other serious blood disorders. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), which is located in Melbourne, has partnered up with American biotech company Retro Biosciences in a deal worth over $35 million USD. The goal is to turn advanced stem cell research into new treatments.

Last year, MCRI scientists made a discovery as they were able to create blood stem cells in the lab from a person’s own cells. These lab-grown cells closely behave like natural ones and could one day be used for safer and more personalized transplants.

Every year, more than 90,000 blood stem cell transplants are done around the world to treat leukemia or bone marrow failure. But these transplants often depend on donor matches, and when a match isn’t perfect, it can lead to serious problems, even death. The MCRI invention may help solve this problem by creating perfectly matched stem cells from a patient's own body, avoiding the risks of donor mismatch.

Their CEO, Joe Betts-LaCroix, said the MCRI discovery could finally make a long-time dream of regenerative medicine a reality. Associate Professor Elizabeth Ng, who led the MCRI research, established that it is possible to take a patient’s own cells, reprogram them into stem cells, and transform them into blood cells that are perfectly matched for transplant, helping to avoid complications caused by donor mismatches. Their CEO, Joe Betts-LaCroix, said the MCRI discovery could finally make a long-time dream of regenerative medicine a reality.

The partnership with Retro Biosciences will help bring this discovery closer to practical use, with hopes of beginning human trials in the next five years. Retro’s mission is to use stem cell technology to extend healthy human life. This partnership also shows Melbourne’s growing role in medical technology research. Victorian Minister Danny Pearson praised the partnership, saying it will help bring new treatment options to people suffering from blood diseases worldwide.