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Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is a chronic, life-threatening disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In the United States, 30,000 new cases are estimated every year with half of those cases diagnosed in young children. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the patient`s immune system goes awry and attacks and destroys the pancreatic beta cells. Beta cells are responsible for regulating blood sugar (glucose) levels by producing precise amounts of the essential hormone insulin. The discovery of injectable insulin in the 1920s changed T1D from a uniformly fatal disease with a life expectancy of months to one that could be carefully managed for decades through multiple daily blood glucose measurements and insulin injections. However, insulin injections are not a cure and patients face a lifetime of difficult disease management and serious complications including kidney failure, blindness and nerve damage. Despite nearly a century passing since the discovery of insulin, insulin injection remains the only treatment available to patients. Semma Therapeutics was founded to develop transformative therapies for patients who currently depend on insulin injections. Recent work in the laboratory of Professor Douglas Melton led to the discovery of a method to generate billions of functional, insulin-producing beta cells in the laboratory. These cells develop in islet-like clusters grown from stem cells. Initial preclinical work in animal models of diabetes has shown that transplantation of these cells are sufficient to control blood glucose levels. This breakthrough technology has been exclusively licensed to Semma Therapeutics for the development of a cell-based therapy for diabetes. Ongoing research at Semma Therapeutics is focused on combining these proprietary cells with a state-of-the-art cell delivery and immune protection strategy that can protect these cells from the patient`s immune system and allow the beta cells to function as they do in non-diabetic individuals. Implantation of the beta cell-filled device has the potential to provide a true replacement for the missing beta cells in a diabetic patient and would not require patient immunosuppression. Semma Therapeutics is working to bring this new therapeutic option to the clinic and improve the lives of patients with diabetes.
PacketDNA Inc. is a Kanata, ON-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
SpringWorks Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that identifies and advances promising science and pioneers efficient pathways for drug development for patients with severe rare diseases and cancer.
The founders of NXT-ID were an integral part of the senior management teams at Technest Holdings, Inc., and its subsidiary Genex Technologies. Genex Technologies was founded in 1995 to develop and commercialize the unique Rainbow® method of capturing 3D data. Since its founding Genex has developed into one of the market leaders in advanced imaging, including 3D and 360-degree technologies. Genex has developed innovative technologies and products for all aspects of imaging, including capture, processing, display, and enhancement. Genex’s products range from 3D cameras to surveillance algorithms to integrated facial recognition systems. Genex and Technest have won awards from the Department of Defense, NIH, NIST and NSF amounting to over $30 million in support of this technology. NXT-ID has licensed all the Technest /Genex technology (exclusively in many markets) to provide a product portfolio and a strong technical foundation for its further development efforts. In addition, NXT-ID has also licensed patents and know-how from the shareholders of Geometrix, Inc., a leading 3D imaging company using a different technical approach to Technest. This technology performed very favorably at the Face Recognition Vendor Test conducted by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). NXT-ID also has key scientific and engineering personnel that have had key roles in the development of these technologies and have an important intellectual knowledge base that the Company intends to leverage.
Nines is a dynamic team applying world-class ML and AI expertise to the field of medicine.