Investing in diabetes treatment
Semma Therapeutics startup, which decided to cure diabetes, raised $114 million
Oleg Ovechkin, Rusbase
American startup Semma Therapeutics, hoping to cure type one diabetes with an implant with insulin-producing cells, has raised $114 million. Business Insider writes about this.
Founded in 2014, the Semma Therapeutics project is engaged in a new type of therapy for type I diabetes, a currently incurable disease in which users need to constantly monitor blood sugar levels and inject the hormone insulin, which allows the body to process sugar (glucose).
Semma Therapeutics expects to collect embryonic stem cells in order to turn them into beta cells - natural producers of insulin, which in diabetes are destroyed by the patient's immune system.
Image source: Pagliuca et al., 2014 – WM.
The startup plans to place the resulting beta cells in implants designed to be implanted under the patient's skin.
With this method, beta cells will secrete insulin directly inside the body, and the immune system will not be able to notice them. This will allow not only to control blood sugar levels, but also, as the project hopes, to cure diabetes, said Mark Fishman, chairman of the Board of Semma Therapeutics, in a conversation with the publication (Fishman probably meant getting rid of the symptoms of diabetes, and not the disease itself – approx. Rusbase).
At the moment, the development is at an early stage – now it is not even known whether patients will need to change the implant, the publication notes. Earlier, Semma Therapeutics conducted tests on animals, and the startup plans to direct new funding to conduct the first clinical trials on humans.
Previously, the startup raised $49 million. The new investment round was attended by both new investors, including Eight Roads Ventures and Cowen Healthcare Investments, as well as the previous ones – MPM Capital, F-Prime Capital Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, Novartis, Medtronic and JDRF's T1D.
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