Af­ter a long, hard slog to the clin­ic, stem cell play­er Vi­a­Cyte fu­els up with $105M for its next big at­tack on di­a­betes

Over the 14 years since 3 com­pa­nies merged to­geth­er to cre­ate the stem cell play­er we now call Vi­a­Cyte in San Diego, the biotech has been op­er­at­ing on a steady stream of cash from the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Re­gen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine as well as the non-prof­it JDRF or­ga­ni­za­tion. 

But with one stem cell prod­uct in the clin­ic and a next-gen prod­uct about to go back in­to hu­man test­ing af­ter a re­vamp — plus a new­ly formed col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gene edit­ing spe­cial­ists at CRISPR Ther­a­peu­tics — CEO Paul Laikind is ready to dou­ble down on a strate­gic bet that the crew at Vi­a­Cyte can make some ma­jor clin­i­cal progress over the next 2 to 3 years.

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