ViaCyte CEO Says $10M Grant Will Move Stem Cell Therapy to Trial

A $10.1 million grant the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) awarded to ViaCyte last week will be used to move the San Diego diabetes company’s stem cell and cell encapsulation technologies into human clinical trials, according to ViaCyte CEO Paul Laikind. CIRM administers $3 billion in funding for stem cell science that California voters approved in 2004 with the passage of Proposition 71.

ViaCyte has developed a pair of related technologies that have eliminated symptoms in diabetic rats and mice. The company was founded in 1999, merged with CyThera and BresaGen in 2004, and was renamed ViaCyte in 2010.

Using genetic tools, ViaCyte says it can direct embryonic stem cells to produce pancreatic progenitor cells with the ability to produce large quantities of safe and functional islet cells, which can be used to treat patients with insulin-dependent Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. A related proprietary technology enables ViaCyte to encapsulate its engineered cells in packets that can be implanted beneath the skin in a way that allows the encapsulated cells to release insulin into the bloodstream. The company describes its technology as an “artificial pancreas” that does not require drugs to suppress the body’s immune response to the implanted cells.

Laikind, who was named as ViaCyte CEO in June, told me yesterday at San Diego’s annual Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa that CIRM has supported ViaCyte through previous rounds of funding. In announcing the grant, CIRM noted that the independent Grants Working Group characterized ViaCyte’s proposed therapy as the “holy grail” of diabetes treatments.

“The focus now is on getting

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.