State Joins Stem Cell Research Pursuit
By Norm Heikens
The Indianapolis Sta
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - KRTBN
January 27, 2005
Indiana's first stem cell company plans to begin operations Tuesday.
EndGenitor Technologies, backed by angel investors and housed Downtown at the Indiana University Emerging Technologies Center incubator, plans to use stem cells from umbilical cords to repair blood vessels.
EndGenitor was founded by Drs. Mervin Yoder and David Ingram, Indiana University School of Medicine researchers who discovered the stem cells early last year.
The pediatricians unmasked "ancestor" cells that enable the body to create cells that make up inner linings of blood vessels and internal organs.
If those endothelial stem cells can be made to heal circulation problems, not only would health care advance but the company could prosper.
"It will have the entrepreneurial energy behind it as well as the scientific energy," said David Johnson, president of BioCrossroads, an economic development group that helped start the company.
"We will be leaders in those things in the future that we are good at today."
Stem cells, the building blocks of all body tissues, are considered one of the most promising areas of life sciences for their potential to heal. The stem cells EndGenitor removes from umbilical blood and blood vessels only develop into blood vessel linings.
EndGenitor's focus on "adult" stem cells sidesteps controversy over stem cells taken from embryos. Anti-abortion advocates say destroying embryos during the experimentation takes a human life and should be banned.
California voters in November approved a proposition creating an institute to pursue stem cell research. That state will borrow $3 billion over 10 years to fund research into human embryonic stem cells.
Dr. Monica Bessler, an internist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the discovery by the IU scientists is interesting but that much remains to be learned before anyone will know it could be useful.
Bessler wrote an editorial on the findings when Ingram and Yoder published their research in the June 2004 issue of Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology.
"It really very much depends," she said of its potential. "I don't think you can tell."
EndGenitor joins several dozen other stem cell companies in the United States, she said, but many more of the companies operate in Israel, Great Britain and other countries.
EndGenitor's delving into the fledgling field of stem cells is high-risk but also fits with state and local attempts to create life sciences jobs to replace manufacturing employment lost to improved technology and outsourcing.
Yoder and Ingram will remain on the IU faculty and consult for EndGenitor.
Yoder, who specializes in care of newborns, said the company will first sell test kits to research firms like Eli Lilly and Co. that test compounds for stopping growth of blood vessels in tumors or stimulating growth of vessels in people with poor circulation.
Joining the firm as chief executive is Ron Henriksen, a partner in the Indianapolis venture capital firm of Twilight Venture Partners.
Retired Lilly research scientist Carlos Lopez will be chief scientific officer and among the company's initial four employees.
Twilight hasn't invested in EndGenitor.
But an Indiana investor seeded the company with $500,000, and other individuals are expected to invest a total of $100,000 through 2005, Henriksen said.
The investors don't want to be identified publicly, he said. |
