Pfizer is to increase its Cambridge staff headcount by around 50 per cent as it pumps $100 million into its international stem cell development programme.

The company’s regenerative medicine unit at Granta Park will become Pfizer’s number one stem cell base worldwide under an initiative that provides the discipline with its largest single cash injection from the corporate sector to date.

Ruth McKernan, chief scientific officer at Pfizer Regenerative Medicine (RM), said that up to 70 people will be working across Pfizer’s two RM operations in Cambridge UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, including 15 new staff at Granta Park, lifting the total to 45.

With the world’s largest pharmaceutical reportedly promising to pump what equates to around £65m into RM over the next three to five years and the new US administration finally opening the regulatory door on the sector, stem cell therapy is finally coming of age.

The investment comes only six months after Pfizer RM opened its facility in Cambridge, UK, to lead its charge into the stem cell industry.

McKernan said Pfizer RM was concentrating on two areas, small molecules that work by modifying cells in the body and cell therapy, where the cells are first grown outside the body.

She said: “The important thing is that we will contribute something that will start opening to cell-based therapies. We are attempting to take it to the next stage and make it scaleable and practical.

“It’s more than just the money – it’s about opening dialogue with the regulators, that’s where the money merit is.”

The first major use of the Pfizer money is for a collaboration with University College London (UCL) for the treatment of certain forms of blindness through the London Project to Cure Blindness.

The collaboration will attempt to develop stem cell-based therapies primarily for wet and dry macular degeneration (AMD), which Pfizer has the rights to progress through clinical trials and then commercialise.

Pfizer’s work on this is also providing a boost for another Cambridge stem cell organisation, Intercytex, whose involvement on the London Project could yield cash royalties.

Intercytex has been involved with the London Project to Cure Blindness since its acquisition of Axordia in December 2008 – a collaboration between UCL’s Institute of Ophth-almology, Moorfields Eye Hospital, London and the Centre for Stem Cell Biology, Sheffield.

In exchange for research funding, and royalties, Axordia is providing UCL with the embryonic stem cell line (SHEF-1) for differentiation into RPE cells.

While Intercytex’s share price profited from the Pfizer announce-ment with a massive percentage rise, it is thought any payment may come too late.

Intercytex has almost completely run out of cash and is now looking for a buyer, having seen its share price plummet over recent months as poor data has seen key products dropped.