Cellular Dynamics International, a Madison, WI-based manufacturer of human cells, said on Thursday that it has divided the company into two business units, one for therapeutics and the other for life science research tools.
The change is effective immediately, the company said.
Emile Nuwaysir, CDI’s president and chief operating officer, will head up the therapeutics division—the more ambitious and experimental of the two. That unit will concentrate on developing and commercializing therapies that use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which CDI co-founder and stem cell pioneer James Thomson helped discover. The company’s therapeutics unit aims to find ways to use iPS cell-based therapies “in the ocular, cardiac, Parkinson’s, and oncology spaces,” CDI said in a press release. It expects to submit investigational new drug applications to the FDA in all four areas between 2018 and 2020.
The life science division, meanwhile, will focus on research products, which have been the company’s bread and butter since it was founded in 2004. CDI said that side of the business is “already on a clear path to profitability.”
Bruce Novich, executive vice president and general manager at CDI, will lead the life science unit. Novich, who is based in New York, is also a division president at Fujifilm North America, CDI said. (Fujifilm, whose global headquarters are in Tokyo, acquired CDI last year for $307 million.)
In November, Kaz Hirao, CDI’s chairman and CEO, told Xconomy that Fujifilm intends to become “the number one company in regenerative medicine.” His statements in Thursday’s press release indicate that his company is still bullish on that field’s potential over the next quarter-century.
“Our company considers the overall regenerative medicine market to represent an early-stage opportunity,” Hirao said in a prepared statement Thursday. “We anticipate tremendous market growth by 2040.”
