Until Monday, "Cythera" was known more as a computer game than as the name of a biotechnology company.
But CyThera Inc, which has no connection to the computer game, is overshadowed no more. The company, which was not known to be working on human embryonic stem cells, turns out to have derived nine colonies of such cells, according to a list released by the National Institutes of Health on Monday. That is more than other organizations better known for stem cells, such as the University of Wisconsin -- and second only to Goteborg University in Sweden, which has 19, according to the NIH list of stem-cell lines that will be eligible for use by federally financed scientists.
That could mean that CyThera will be sought out by academic scientists who are anxious to begin work on cells that they think can be used to grow heart, brain, liver and other cells to repair damaged organs. But CyThera, based in San Diego, said it is not quite ready for the limelight. It is privately held, with only US$2 million in venture financing, and it has only 10 employees.
"We're sort of blushing brides here," said Michael J. Ross, the company's president and chief executive.
The company's goal is to grow insulin-producing pancreas cells that can be implanted in patients to treat diabetes. But until now the company has not publicized the fact that it is using embryonic stem cells in its research.
"When I saw on that list that they had all those stem-cell lines, I was surprised," said Susan Bonner-Weir, an expert on diabetes cell therapy at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School.
Ross said CyThera kept quiet because there was "no advantage to publicity, especially in an area that some people consider controversial."
But when it became clear, he said, that the NIH was drawing up its list of laboratories with stem cells, the company realized it should get on the list so it would be able to share its cells with academic scientists in the future.
But CyThera executives said it will be months, maybe longer, before the company is ready to provide cells to researchers. The company, which is worried about being overwhelmed by requests for cells, said it first needs to better characterize the properties of the cells it has.
Ross said CyThera has so many cell lines because the company was trying to find a different way to derive stem cells from the method used at the University of Wisconsin, where the first human embryonic stem cells were isolated three years ago.
"We weren't just trying to derive cell lines," he said. "We were trying to derive cell lines that are independent, and improve the techniques."
Ross said CyThera's method differs from Wisconsin's not in the way cells are obtained -- from discarded embryos at fertility clinics -- but in the way the cells are cultured.
He said he thinks the cells might avoid infringing Wisconsin's stem-cell patent, though that is not clear. Commercial rights to develop pancreatic cells under the Wisconsin patent have been licensed to Geron Corp of Menlo Park, California.
Doctors in Edmonton, Alberta, last year showed great success in weaning about a dozen diabetics from insulin injections by using cells derived from cadavers. That means that when CyThera does have some cells ready for transplant, it will already know how many cells are needed and where best to transplant them, taking some of the risk out of the clinical trials. CyThera is now trying to raise an additional US$8 million. It will take tens of millions of dollars and several years to advance to early clinical trials, in which the company will try to prove that the concept can work.
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