$BTX's management has a great ability to find non-dilutive financing.
Title: BioTime Awarded Grant from the NIH
• $1.56 Million Award
• Accelerates Retinal Restoration Program
ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep. 18, 2017-- BioTime, Inc. (NYSE American:BTX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing products addressing degenerative diseases, today announced that it has been awarded a grant of up to $1.56 million from the Small Business Innovation Research program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The grant provides funding to further develop BioTime's innovative, next-generation vision restoration program for more advanced retinal diseases and injuries, which severely impact the quality of life for millions of people with no treatment option. This initiative aims at improving vision in people affected by blindness, whether caused by retinal injuries, age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa or other causes.
"This grant is a significant validation of our vision restoration program from the NIH, which funds research and development that they believe has a strong potential for technology commercialization," said Francois Binette, Ph.D., Head of Global Development at BioTime. "At BioTime, we are leveraging our expertise to develop a rich pipeline of cell therapy products for ophthalmology. We remain focused on working with various institutions to support these activities through important non-dilutive funding like this grant."
BioTime scientists have grown a piece of 3-dimensional (3-D) retinal tissue using the Company's proprietary pluripotent cell technology platform. The 3-D retinal tissue contains all the cell types that comprise the human retina, including retinal pigment epithelium cells, photoreceptors and ganglion cells. Data presented at ARVO demonstrates that BioTime's 3-D retinal tissue closely resembles a developing human retina. The technology may ultimately be used to repair and restore sections of degenerated retinal tissue to improve vision caused by retinal degeneration and traumatic injury. The Company's 3-D retinal tissue technology may address the unmet need of implementing a retinal restoration strategy to address severe retinal degenerative diseases, with a mutation-free retinal tissue produced in a strictly controlled laboratory setting.
This vision restoration program will be a collaborative effort led by BioTime's Principal Investigator Igor O. Nasonkin Ph.D., with Dr. Simon Petersen-Jones, Michigan State University (MSU) and Dr. Magdalene Seiler, University of California, Irvine (UCI).
Dr. Petersen-Jones is the Myers-Dunlap Endowed Chair in Canine Health in the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences at MSU and is a board-certified veterinary surgeon. Dr. Petersen-Jones specializes in ophthalmology and has characterized numerous large-eye animal models that will play an essential role in demonstrating the feasibility and utility of BioTime's vision restoration therapies. Dr. Seiler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UCI's School of Medicine and has developed a well-characterized small animal model for assessing structure/function of subretinal tissue transplantation.
About BioTime, Inc.
BioTime is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing products addressing degenerative diseases. The Company's current clinical programs are targeting three primary sectors, aesthetics, ophthalmology and cell/drug delivery. Its clinical programs are based on two platform technologies: pluripotent cells and cell/drug delivery. The foundation of BioTime's core therapeutic technology platform is pluripotent cells that are capable of becoming any of the cell types in the human body. The foundation of the Company's cell delivery platform is its HyStem® cell and drug delivery matrix technology. BioTime also has significant equity holdings in two publicly traded companies, Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. and OncoCyte Corporation, and one private company, AgeX Therapeutics.
