At-a-Glance:| Company | Axol Bioscience |
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| Specialties | Human iPSCs |
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| Mission | To provide the best quality iPSC products and custom research services to support and drive global discovery, research, and development. |
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| Noteworthy | Axol’s experienced scientists are at the forefront of iPSC R&D and are constantly developing and extending its iPSC product listing, culture design, and disease modeling capabilities. |
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| Location | Roslin and Cambridge, U.K. |
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| CEO | Liam Taylor |
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Axol Bioscience has a singular focus on realizing the potential of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for better, more human-relevant model systems to accelerate and de-risk drug discovery. The company’s key capabilities include axoLines™ (a bank of over 70 fully characterized and licensed iPSC lines), axoCells™ (high-quality, functionally consistent iPSC-derived cells), axoServices™ (a comprehensive suite of QC-rich custom lab services), and axoModels™ (collaborative building, validation, and use of iPSC-based models).
Founded in 2013, Axol has been working with iPSCs in a quality-focused environment for over a decade and has developed a deep understanding of the challenges of this space as well as how to resolve them. Three years ago, after merging with Censo Biotechnologies, the company evolved to provide a suite of offerings including iPSC lines, iPSC-derived cells, custom lab services, and collaborative in vitro model building for use across the R&D and drug discovery spectrum from basic research, discovery and efficacy, early and late preclinical stages, to clinical trial design and implementation.
Operating across the globe, Axol has two main sites in the U.K. Its manufacturing facility, where it produces high-quality iPSC products at scale under ISO 9001 guidelines, is located at the Roslin Innovation Centre in Easter Bush. The R&D hub, where it develops products and services in collaboration with customers, is situated at the Babraham Research Campus in Cambridge.
Axol Bioscience has three main areas of focus: neurodegenerative disease (utilizing neuronal cells and neuroinflammatory cells, including astrocytes, cortical excitatory neurons, and microglia), disorders of the peripheral nervous system (including pain and touch, using high-quality sensory neurons) and cardiotoxicity, with atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes that demonstrate distinct chamber-specificity.
axoCells™ microglia thawed and matured for 7 days. Cells were fixed and stained for the relevant markers (Red; Iba1, TMEM119, CX3CR1 and P2RY12) and imaged using a Leica microscope. Blue: DAPI
As part of Axol’s focus on neurodegenerative disease, one of its key efforts is realizing a “clinical trial in a dish” model for patient stratification in Alzheimer’s Disease and ALS. The ability to represent a physiologically relevant, diverse cohort, in an in vitro format could provide a powerful platform for drug development and clinical trial design. This approach would allow for more efficient and accurate testing of drugs and therapies before they are tested in clinical trials, saving enormous amounts of time and money.
The company is committed to quality and consistency. Its mantra is simple: do it once and do it well. It also prioritizes quality control and robust data reporting to ensure there are no surprise challenges (or costs), maximizing project success.
With over a decade of iPSC technical expertise and operational excellence, Axol prides itself on being highly collaborative, working tirelessly with charitable, academic, regulatory, and industrial partners to deliver quality, consistent iPSC-derived cells, models, and assay data to unlock the benefits of iPSC technology and drive R&D and drug discovery forward.
As the global iPSC market continues to expand, Axol Bioscience are asking a simple question: iPSCs? What can we do to help?