Regenerative tissue work draws investors
Biotech firm LyGenesis raises $3 million in financing
A University of Pittsburgh spinout company offers a remarkable prospect for people with a disease-ridden liver: a way to make a new liver.
Like something from a science fiction novel, LyGenesis Inc. claims to have come up with a way to create working liver tissue in patients whose organs have been destroyed by disease. Investors are feeling the buzz.
LyGenesis announced Wednesday that it raised $3 million in Series A financing from Juvenescence Ltd., a year-old venture capital
company based in the British Virgin Islands. The LyGenesis concept has worked in mice, but the money will allow the company to finish the groundwork necessary for trials in humans, chief scientific officer Eric Lagasse said.
Food and Drug Administration approval will also be needed before commercialization, which is expected within six years.
“If you know the biology, it’s not science fiction,” Mr. Lagasse said. “I fix mice, but we have a lot of data that we feel is clearly applicable to patients.”
LyGenesis is working to harness the lymphatic system, a human mini-bioreactor of sorts, to nurture healthy liver cells that are introduced into the body, allowing them to grow and proliferate, eventually assuming the filtration duties of a normal liver. Aiding the process is the liver’s natural ability to regenerate. Studies have shown that the human liver regenerates to full size when as much as 80 percent of the organ has been removed.
On average, 20 people die each day waiting for a transplant because of a shortage of organs to use, but the LyGenesis technology will not replace liver transplants, according to CEO Michael Hufford.
Instead, nurturing new liver tissue within the patient’s own body would likely complement rather than replace transplantation. One possibility: The therapy could be used as a bridge to liver transplant, Mr. Hufford said.
The technology reflects medicine’s new push to use the body’s own biologic machinery to fix genetic defects and treat such intractable diseases as cancer and Alzheimer’s.
LyGenesis is the third startup spun out this year from the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a South Oakland PittUPMC research facility that was founded in 1992.
LyGenesis has three employees. Mr. Lagasse, who directs the Cancer Stem Cell Center at McGowan, where he has a lab, is chief scientific officer. West Virginia University director of research and innovation Paulo Fontes is chief medical officer. Mr. Hufford, Innovation Institute entrepreneur-in-residence and a veteran of the life sciences field with 20 years’ experience, is CEO.