Australia's Mesoblast reaches milestone on Temcell with Japan partner JCR

Australia's Mesoblast will make the leap from drug discovery as Japanese partner JCR Pharmaceutical received approval to begin sales of an off-the-shelf allogeneic, or regenerative, medical product, Temcell, based on Mesoblast technology, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "Under its agreement with JCR, Mesoblast is entitled to receive a milestone payment on this product regulatory approval, as well as royalties and other payments at pre-defined thresholds of cumulative net sales," Mesoblast said in a release. In April, Mesoblast and U.S.-based Celgene ($CELG) entered into an investment and development deal for cancer and immune-inflammatory related diseases that also covers stem cell product candidates, including right-of-first-refusal for 6 months over the proprietary mesenchymal lineage adult stem cell product candidates from Mesoblast. Report