Acquisition will help firm advance its type 1 diabetes therapy.
ReNeuron reported plans to buy the business assets of AmCyte, a development-stage cell therapy company, in a transaction worth about $4 million.
ReNeuron will gain AmCyte’s cell-encapsulation technology and its U.S. laboratories and staff. ReNeuron says that it intends to combine its own well-characterized, scalable pancreatic cells with the cell-encapsulation system to produce a best-in-class islet cell therapy for type 1 diabetes.
The combination has the potential to overcome the two principle obstacles facing islet cell therapy for diabetes, according to the companies: the lack of suitable donated pancreatic tissue from which to derive high-quality insulin-producing islet cells and the immune rejection typically seen when transplanting raw islets into diabetes patients.
“This transaction will substantially enhance ReNeuron’s cell therapy capabilities,” comments Michael Hunt, CEO of ReNeuron. “As well as bringing us a talented research and development team in the U.S., we believe that the combination of ReNeuron’s ReN002 islet cells and AmCyte’s encapsulation technology has the potential to place our business among the leaders in the development of a safe and efficacious cell therapy for type 1 diabetes patients.”
It is expected that completion of the acquisition and the admission to AIM of the new ordinary shares will occur at 8:00 am on August 1.
