ViaCyte, Inc., a privately-held regenerative medicine company with the first pluripotent stem cell-derived islet replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes in clinical-stage development, today announced that the Company has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Takara Bio, Inc.  Takara will utilize certain portions of ViaCyte's cell differentiation technology to expand its stem cell product line, marketed under the Cellartisbrand.  Takara will make the technology available for research purposes only, not for clinical or commercial application.

The licensing agreement includes ViaCyte technology for a robust method of making definitive endoderm cells from induced pluripotent stem cells, a necessary step in the production of a number of cell types.  Takara will incorporate the technology into the kits it markets to researchers, including the Cellartis^® iPS Cell to Hepatocyte Differentiation System. 

"During our work to develop a stem cell-derived replacement cell therapy for type 1 diabetes, ViaCyte scientists successfully addressed a number of difficult problems in cell differentiation," said Paul Laikind, Ph.D., president and CEO of ViaCyte.  "Licensing select aspects of our technology makes it more broadly available to the scientific community and should help to accelerate progress in the stem cell space across multiple therapeutic indications."