RE:RE:RE:Vertex and Witkowski PartnershipThey have some major hurdles to overcome if they plan to go with the Portal vein route.
When injecting straight into frontline immune tissue, immune protection will be more challenging. Another problem is containing and removing any potentially tumorigenic cells. Tumorigenicity is a clinical hurdle for pluripotent stem cells and being able to contain them and remove them is a necessity.
Perhaps Vertex is proving the clinical safety and efficacy of the cells before entering a some kind of collaboration/deal with Sernova. Something doesn't add up IMO.