Large information within the race for a kind 1 diabetes treatment: Vertex Prescription drugs will buy ViaCyte. The 2 companies had been beforehand direct opponents, each pioneering comparable potential sort diabetes 1 cures utilizing transplanted lab-grown islet cells.
A Vertex spokesman said that the acquisition “will speed up our objective of reworking, if not curing T1D by increasing our capabilities and bringing further instruments, applied sciences and property to our present stem cell-based applications.”
Proper now, the impression of the deal is unclear. It’s not simple to foretell if this may hasten or gradual progress in direction of a stem cell-based treatment.
One the one hand, competitors is the engine of innovation in capitalism, and it have to be thought of a superb factor when a number of companies are racing one another to the end line. The deal raised at the least a couple of eyebrows amongst buyers; some puzzled if the Federal Commerce Fee would examine the acquisition for an antitrust violation. A cynical interpretation may level out that this wouldn’t be the primary time a bigger enterprise acquired a smaller one to get rid of its competitors.
However in an ideal world, combining the property of the 2 biotech companies would pace up the progress.
I reached out to ViaCyte, and expressed issues that consolidating the 2 companies would cut back the aggressive incentive. Marie Rossi, PhD, ViaCyte’s senior director of communications, instructed me that the deal represented “the very best path to speed up cell-based therapies for sufferers residing with T1D” by offering “each corporations with complementary property, capabilities, and applied sciences.”
As of at the moment, Vertex is at the least few steps forward of ViaCyte. Their first affected person is now insulin-free, an amazing landmark that led among the mainstream media to marvel if he’d already been “cured.” However many within the diabetes neighborhood don’t think about it a real treatment, as a result of he nonetheless must take immunosuppressive medicine – and can want to take action for the remainder of his life. These medicine can include hefty negative effects.
That’s the place ViaCyte could are available. Though each Vertex and ViaCyte have lengthy labored on methods of encapsulating transplanted islet cells in order that they are often bodily shielded from the immune system, ViaCyte now has a extra promising resolution. It has begun experimenting with islet cells which were gene-edited to evade the immune system. This method, which employs the “revolutionary” Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR expertise, may be the successful components for a purposeful sort 1 diabetes treatment. If it really works, these edited cells would cover in plain sight from the physique’s immune assaults, together with the autoimmunity dysfunction that causes sort 1 diabetes within the first place.
Did Vertex buy ViaCyte with a view to mix the brand new gene-editing breakthrough with its personal laboratory’s progress? It looks like affordable hypothesis.
As for ViaCyte, we simply acquired an honest concept of their doubtless motivations because of the current launch of the documentary The Human Trial. The movie offers us an intimate have a look at the corporate, following the ViaCyte scientists engaged on the potential treatment (and the brave volunteers keen to check it). The film portrays a number of ViaCyte staff tearfully explaining their dedication to the trigger – nevertheless it additionally exposes the precarious monetary place that the startup has discovered itself in. We comply with ViaCyte executives as they traipse throughout the globe searching for buyers, and listen to them admit that it’s all however inevitable that they’ll ultimately have to companion with bigger companies to convey their therapy to market. It’s comprehensible if that admission strikes an ominous notice for some readers, given the fraught relationship a few of us have with the enormous pharmaceutical corporations that make the insulin we have to survive.
The street to a treatment has been lengthy and bumpy, filled with false hopes and unrealistic guarantees. Right here’s hoping that these two companies will mix forces to work higher and quicker for folks with sort 1 diabetes.
