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Custom Biogenic Systems is a Romeo, MI-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
BioLink Life Sciences is a Cary, NC-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Development America is a Warren, NJ-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
XOMA is a late-stage biotechnology company with a diverse portfolio of innovative therapeutic antibodies. The Company has built an expertise in allosteric modulation and has applied that expertise to expand the therapeutic potential of monoclonal antibodies. The first compound from XOMA’s allosteric modulating antibody program is gevokizumab, an IL-1 beta modulating antibody. XOMA has partnered with SERVIER, a global pharmaceutical company based in France, to develop and commercialize gevokizumab for the global market, and the companies are conducting a global Phase 3 program in people with Behçet’s disease uveitis and non-infectious uveitis. Each company also has a proof-of-concept (POC) clinical program in place to identify other IL-1 mediated diseases that could be treated with gevokizumab. One of these POC studies led XOMA to select its next Phase 3 indication, pyoderma gangrenosum, a rare ulcerative skin disease. XOMA`s scientific research also produced the XMet program, which consists of three classes of preclinical allosteric modulating antibodies, including Selective Insulin Receptor Modulators (SIRMs) that could have a major impact on the treatment of diabetes. XOMA will retain the compound that has potential to treat several rare insulin dysfunction-related diseases and to out-license the compounds that could address the diabetes markets.
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.