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CellSeed Inc. is a Japan-based biotechnology innovator committed to development and commercialisation of highly differentiated tissue-engineered products for patients that are not sufficiently served by current medical technologies. CellSeed owns novel cell-sheet engineering technology developed by Professor Okano at Tokyo Women's Medical University. The core technology is based on grafting any kind of synthetic polymers to organic materials covalently at nano-thickness level. When CellSeed's temperature-responsive polymers are grafted to the cell culture surface, the recovery of intact cells retaining important cell surface proteins becomes possible through temperature control. This process avoids the use of potentially damaging enzymatic treatment such as the use of trypsin when detaching cells from the cell culture surface. Cells cultured in this way can be collected in a form of contiguous cell-sheet rather than as isolated cells. This tissue requires no suture when grafted to patients and the cell-sheets can be piled together to create 3-dimensional tissue. CellSeed's lead product is regenerated living cornea epithelium, targeting poor epithelium recovery after corneal grafts and persistent epithelial defects. An IND for this product is being filed in Europe, with initiation of clinical trials expected in 2007. Cellseed is also applying its core technology beyond tissue-regeneration. The Company is distributing its novel cell cultureware products, such as RepCell and HydroCell, for the worldwide research market. The Company also recently launched its Aqua Way series, a novel HPLC column which separates small molecules, peptides and proteins using a temperature-controlled method.