ViaCyte Inc. is emerging as a leader in regenerative medicine and is all set to develop a new approach for the treatment of major diseases using cell therapy derived from stem cells. The company was granted 28 patents in 2011-2013 of which 17 are US and remaining 11 in other countries. Among the 11 patents, one of the patents got granted in Europe patent office (EP2283117B1) which is a challenge in view of their changing laws and guidelines for innovation with respect to embryonic stem cells. With these patents it has strong position for proprietary of its new combination product VC-01TM and also for its upcoming applications.
VC-01TM, a new cell therapy based product would be used to manage Type 1 diabetes. The product is a combination of two of its proprietary technologies that is PEC-01, progenitor cells produced by directed differentiated process and Encaptra Drug Delivery system. The product would be inserted under the skin. After implantation, vascularisation and maturation of designed PEC cells would form islet like structures that would secrete insulin and other factors to regulate blood glucose levels. It is expected that with the success of the product (that would be undergoing clinical trials by mid next week), pancreatic endocrine cells that were lost due to disease would be replaced.
Including patents granted this year, the company has 91 patents in its basket and about 230 still in queue as applications at patent offices. This shows company’s internal developmental efforts and research. Some of the applications are based on culture, expansion and scale-up of pluripotent cells, differentiation processes for mesendoderm production, Encaptra and PEC-01.
Company’s President and CEO Dr. Paul Laikind, at this point talked about company’s comprehensive and growing IP portfolio that aided in making it leader in regenerative medicines and cell replacement therapy. He also stated that the success would improve lives of insulin dependent diabetes patients without any immune suppression and risk of hypoglycaemia and other complications.