What You Need to Know About Semma Therapeutics

January 9, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Semma Therapeutics focuses on diabetes research using stem cells.

The company is built on research that came out of Doug Melton’s laboratory at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where Melton and his team, including scientific co-founder Felicia Pagliuca, were able to generate beta cells in a petri dish. These stem cell-derived beta (Scbeta) cells were tested in vitro and in vivo to compare to beta cells within human pancreatic islet cells, where insulin is produced. The Scbeta cells responded in a way very similar to the key functional feature of endogenous human beta cells, essentially mimicking the activity of normal human beta cells.

Early preclinical work has shown that when the human Scbeta cells are transplanted into mice, they show high levels of human insulin in their blood after a glucose challenge. In animal models, they have been shown to effectively control diabetes.

The company’s focus is on developing a delivery system and method of creating transplantable stem cells as a possible cure for Type 1 diabetes.

For the last twenty years or so, Melton’s research with stem cells has focused on Type 1 diabetes. The reason behind that, said Robert Millman in an exclusive interview with BioSpace in 2015, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, is because two of his children were diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes 18 years ago. “We felt that since Doug has focused his whole work on his two children, Sam and Emma, that the company should become Semma, Sam and Emma.”

Company Leadership
Robert Millman—chief executive officer and co-founder. He has been involved in the formation and acted as the intellectual property counsel for several companies, including Epizyme , Verastem . Most recently Millman founded and led CoStim Pharmaceuticals as its first president.

Doug Melton—is the scientific founder and a board observer. He is the Xander University Professor at Harvard and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is also co-chair of the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative biology and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Walter Blättler—vice president of manufacturing. Prior to joining Semma, Blättler was vice president of development at CoStim Pharmaceuticals. Before that he was executive vice president of Science and Technology at

ImmunoGen

Felicia Pagliuca—scientific co-founder and vice president of technology and corporate development. Pagliuca was a postdoctoral fellow in Doug Melton’s laboratory, where she managed collaborations and developed strategies for generating insulin-producing cells. She is an expert in stem cell biology and diabetes, and one of the inventors of Semma Therapeutics’ key technologies.

Moses Goddard—chief medical officer. He is currently an associate professor of surgery at

Brown University. He was most recently co-founder and chief executive officer of Cytosolv.Company Financing
On March 18, 2015, Semma closed on a $44 million Series A financing round made up mostly of equity financing and strategic funding. The financing was led by MPM Capital, with Fidelity Biosciences, ARCH Venture Partners, and

Medtronic participating.

On September 12, 2016, the company announced it had received a $5 million grant from the

California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The grant funds development of personalized cell therapy to treat diabetes.

“This grant from CIRM funds a program designed to overcome these challenges,” Millman said in a statement. “Using this technology, the challenges of supply are overcome. By deriving these stem cells from a patient’s own blood or skin, the challenges of allogeneic immune-rejection are also circumvented.”

Pipeline
At the moment the company’s focus is on developing an encapsulating device that would allow for the functioning beta cells to be implanted while protecting them from the body’s own immune system. It’s looking at a couple different routes, both internal and external, and about one-third of the Series A funding will go toward developing or buying an appropriate device.

Market Competition
A lot of big players in the diabetes market like Sanofi and MannKind are undoubtedly keeping an eye on what Semma is doing. Other companies also working in this area include ViaCyte and BetaLogics.

Dollars and Deals
In addition to its Series A financing, Semma signed an undisclosed agreement with

Novartis Pharmaceuticals . It also acquired Rhode Island company Cytosolv, which is a drug delivery technology company. The company’s headquarters in Boston focuses on beta cell manufacturing and purification. Its Rhode Island location, formerly Cytosolv, dubbed “Semma South,” focuses on the delivery system. Millman said, “The founders of Cytosolv were trying to do similar things with porcine islets, so they have a lot of experience with cell delivery systems.”

Millman also noted the company’s relationship with Medtronic, “which provides great access,” he said, “to and new knowledge in the delivery area.”

Of its relationship with Novartis, much of it remains undisclosed, but Millman said, “They are a strategic partner. Semma looks to them to be one of the pharmaceutical companies that made a commitment to gene therapy, and therefore it was a very good partner of choice.”

Semma has also created relationships with the

JDRF Diabetes Foundation and the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami as a way of partnering with organizations that have a vested interest in the technology and access to delivery solutions.

In June 2016, Semma teamed up with the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and several Boston-area hospitals to make personalized cell-based therapies and organize clinical trials. This program is dubbed the Boston Autologous Islet Replacement Program.

See Top Life Science Startups 2017
See Top Life Science Startups 2016
See Top Life Science Startups 2015