Viacyte is one of the most exciting biotechs in the stem cells for diabetes space.
Dr. Kevin D’Amour, Director of Stem Cell Research at Viacyte, gave an excellent, extremely interesting talk Friday morning: Developing an Encapsulated Stem Cell Therapy for Diabetes.
Viacyte talk
In the talk, Dr. D’Amour gave a very detailed description of their products Pro-Islet and Encaptra. Together these products form an encapsulated beta-cell product that is in pre-clinical development for the use in treating Type I Diabetes.
In discussing Pro-Islet, he mentioned that it is 98% pancreatic cells and 2% other cells. Once encapsulated, Pro-Islet maintained normal human blood sugar levels in recipient mice suggesting that the human ES cell-derived beta cells are programmed to maintain the normal human level of blood sugar (about 100) as opposed to the normal mouse level which is about 2-fold higher. Since it is encapsulated the product has many advantages including it can be removed, it is immune protected, and it keeps the cells in a defined location for enhanced safety.
I am very excited about this technology and Dr. D’Amour’s talk was intriguing. I asked during the Q&A how long he thinks it will be until they are anticipating starting a Phase I trial and he said 18-24 months.