BioTime Receives $335,900 SBIR Grant

BioTime, Inc.

today announced it has been awarded a 10-month, $335,900 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop HyStem® microcarriers for the propagation of human stem cells and as a means of cell delivery for human clinical applications. “Hundreds of millions of stem cells will be required for many of the clinical applications in the emerging field of regenerative medicine,” said William P. Tew, Ph.D., Chief Commercial Officer of BioTime. “The rapid advances in the field create the need for new techniques and products to successfully produce and administer therapeutic cells. BioTime's HyStem® microcarriers are designed to streamline the process of replicating stem cells on the same substrate that may be used to deliver cell-based therapy." "We believe this single step from therapeutic cell propagation on HyStem® microcarriers to injection into the patient has the potential to reduce costs and increase the use of future products. We are pleased that the NIH has selected our HyStem technology for funding in a highly competitive review process. The non-dilutive capital provided by this Phase I SBIR grant will allow us to test our HyStem® hydrogel microcarriers in disease-relevant transplantation models. If successful, the business opportunities can be significant in state-of-the-art scale-up and clinical delivery of stem cells for a wide variety of indications. Researchers around the world are working with stem cells, and numerous companies are planning human clinical trials of stem cell therapies. The successful development of this new product would open up additional revenue opportunities for BioTime in both the research products market and as a recipient of license and royalty fees from therapeutic product sales by these companies.”