Author Archives: Fredricko

Light Coverage of Cellular Dynamics IPO But One Exec Says It’s Good for Stem Cell Biz

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A handful of media outlets today
carried stories about the public stock offering announced yesterday
by Cellular Dynamics International, Inc., a Wisconsin firm that will
benefit to the tune of $16 million-plus from the California stem cell agency.
Kathleen Gallagher of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel described the company, founded by stem cell pioneer
Jamie Thomson, as in the business of making “fully functioning human cells in industrial quantities.”
Judy Newman of the Wisconsin State
Journal in Madison, where the company is based, quoted Beth Donley,
chief executive of Stemina
Biomarker Discovery, as saying,

“It can’t help but increase the
value of other stem cell companies.”

Thomson is a professor both at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison and at UC Santa Barbara, and we
queried Dennis Clegg, co-director of the Center for Stem Cell
Biology and Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, about the school's
ties to Cellular Dynamics, which hopes to take in $57 million in its public offering.
He replied in an email that Santa
Barbara has a collaboration with Cellular Dynamics and the University
of Wisconsin to develop a vision-restoring, stem-cell-based therapy
for people with advanced retinal diseases. That $900,000 effort is financed by the Foundation Fighting Blindness.
The California stem cell agency grant
to Cellular Dynamics is for work at the stem cell bank being created
at the Buck Institute in Novato, north of San Francisco.
The Milwaukee Business Journal and
Genomeweb also carried stories on the IPO.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/iGlLbdQVr0Y/light-coverage-of-cellular-dynamics-ipo.html

Cellular Dynamics: California Stem Cell Agency Recipient Plans $57 Million IPO

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A Wisconsin firm that is the
beneficiary of more than $16 million from the California stem cell
agency today announced that it intends to go public to raise $57.3
million for its iPS cell ventures.
Jamie Thomson
UCSB photo
The firm is Cellular Dynamics
International, Inc., and was co-founded by internationally known stem
cell scientist Jamie Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, who is
currently the company's chief scientific officer. Thomson is also a professor
at UC Santa Barbara, where he is co-director of the Center for Stem
Cell Biology and Engineering.
In March, the California stem cell
agency awarded a $16 million grant to Cellular Dynamics to derive
three iPS cell lines from 3,000 individuals as part of the agency's
stem cell banking initiative. (Here is a link to the grant review summary.)
The company said in its SEC
filings that it also will be the prime subcontractor on a $10 million
grant that the Coriell Institute for Medical Research of Camden,
N.J., received in the agency's stem cell banking round. Cellular Dynamics said
some of the funds from the IPO will be used to complete its
California laboratory in leased space at the Buck Institute in
Novato, north of San Francisco.
Cellular Dynamics was founded in 2004
and sold its first commercial product in 2010. It reported revenues
of $6.6 million in 2012 and losses of $22.3 million. It has 115
full-time and part-time employees worldwide.
The company said,

“During 2011 and 2012, we had three
large biopharmaceutical customers that individually accounted for
greater than 10% of our total revenue in one or both years. Eli Lilly
and Company (Lilly) accounted for 10% of total revenue in 2011 and
18% of total revenue in 2012. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche)
accounted for 13% of total revenue in 2011 and GlaxoSmithKline plc
(GSK) accounted for 11% of our total revenue in 2012.”

Cellular Dynamics also said in its
filings,

“Our total revenue grew from $2.6
million in 2011 to $6.6 million in 2012, an increase of 154%. This
growth was driven by a 247% increase in sales of our iCell products
which grew from $1.5 million in 2011 to $5.2 million in 2012. At
December 31, 2011, our backlog of revenue expected to be recognized
in 2012 was $1.1 million. At December 31, 2012, our backlog of
revenue expected to be recognized in 2013 had grown to $4.1 million.

“For the three months ended March 31,
2013 our total revenue was $2.4 million, an increase of 109% over the
corresponding period in 2012. This growth was driven primarily by an
increase in iCell product sales, which grew from $0.6 million for the
three months ended March 31, 2012 to $1.8 million for the three
months ended March 31, 2013, an increase of 173%.”

Paul Knoepfler of UC Davis, writing on his blog, touched on some of the aspects of the IP issues involving
Cellular Dynamics and  Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize last year for discovering how to reprogram adult stem cells into pluripotent cells (the iPS process).
 Knoepfler wrote,

"A
recent question is the issue of who has the intellectual property
(IP) rights to iPS cell technology. People have told me in the
past that they wondered if Cellular Dynamics has unambiguous rights
to develop all of these iPS cell-based products."

Knoepfler also wrote,

 “This (the IPO) looks to
be very interesting and could transform the field as it develops.”

News coverage today of the IPO filing
was light, but is more expected to surface tomorrow. Here is a link to the only story that had surfaced as of this writing. 

No price or date has yet been set for
the offering.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/0oup8hU2FGE/cellular-dynamics-california-stem-cell.html

Pomeroy on Doing the Right Thing and Foster Care

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Claire Pomeroy
CIRM photo
On Claire Pomeroy's last day as a
member of the governing board of the $3 billion California stem cell
agency, she also published an essay on the Huffington Post in which
she discussed fleeing from an abusive home at age 14.
Pomeroy, former vice chancellor and
dean of the medical school at UC Davis and now president of the Lasker Foundation in New York,  wrote last month,

“For some children, the uncertainty
of life on the street is better than certainty of violence at home.
It was for me. At age 14, I escaped from an abusive home with no
money, nowhere to go and only the clothes I was wearing. I remember
staring into the night, standing somewhere between fear and freedom.
I became one of the millions of homeless teens, yet I was lucky
because foster care ultimately saved me.”

“However, after an emergency
placement and three foster homes, the challenges were not over. At 17
I aged out of the foster care system early when my foster parents
moved out of state. On my own again, I had to find a job, a place to
live and finish high school. Then I climbed the next mountain to
graduate from college and medical school.”

Pomeroy said she only recently began
publicly talking about her foster care experience. She said she is
doing so because “many  people lack an understanding of
the harsh statistics and their impact on the country's future. The
nation faces a crisis that demands a call to action to start truly
caring about foster youth before it is too late.”
She said that she was “lucky” in the
foster care system but said that many children, particularly minorities among others such as the disabled, were not as fortunate and “were failed by the system and society.” Pomeroy called them
“throwaway children” who were “robbed of their ideals, gave up
hope and struggled to find a reason to live.”
Less than half of the foster children
who “age out” of the system graduate from high school, she wrote. Only 3
percent to 11 percent earn a bachelor's degree. More than
400,000 children were in foster care in 2011 and have a one in 11 chance
of being homeless.
Pomeroy called for expansion and
improvement of foster care across the country. “It is time to stop
forcing children to be the heroes of their own survival,” she
wrote. “Now is the time to do the right the right thing.”
------
On a personal note, we have four
grandchildren, one of whom was adopted out of foster care as a
toddler. The other was adopted at birth. Some of the siblings of
those two African-American children remain in foster care today.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/zancriHTUC4/pomeroy-on-doing-right-thing-and-foster.html