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Cambridge, Mass., biotech startup working to unlock new applications for cell therapies — particularly for type 1 diabetes — is getting new leadership.

It will be Vivaldi’s job now to get the startup in the clinic, looking to move the pipeline beyond its initial forays into diabetes, hemophilia and lysosomal storage disorders. 

A little more than one year after Flagship Pioneering launched Sigilon Therapeutics, the company has a new chief executive officer.

Sigilon Therapeutics is bringing on Bioverativ’s chief global therapeutic operations officer, Rogerio Vivaldi, M.D., to serve as its CEO.

US-based biotech Sigilon aiming to deliver stem cell therapies for diabetes is getting a new leader.

“There are two elements that I’m familiar with which relate to Sigilon in particular. We have a technology that hides implants from the immune system so that the immune system won’t attack those implants. That means for the first time now we can manufacture cellular implants so you can do things like the artificial pancreas, which is what we did with Eli Lilly & Co.. Or you can manufacture implants that become cell factories, which can do things like treat hemophilia by manufacturing Factor VIII or Factor IX.”

In April, insulin maker Eli Lilly announced it would invest up to $473 million in Sigilon Therapeutics and the cell encapsulation technology the Cambridge, Mass., biotech company is developing was big news in the type 1 diabetes space. We’ve been following this encapsulation technology since I met with Arturo Vegas in 2015, when he was a chemistry post doc at MIT working Robert Langer and  Daniel Anderson at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Paul Wotton, Ph.D., CEO of Sigilon Therapeutics, discusses his company’s approach for delivering cells that avoid immune detection.

Encapsulated cell therapy is an emerging area of biopharmaceutical research that aims to unleash the therapeutic potential of cells…

In patients who suffer from Type I diabetes, pancreatic beta cells are killed off by the immune system. Lilly and Sigilon plan to encapsulate induced pluripotent stem cells that are engineered into insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Ultimately, the companies hope, these products can restore a person’s insulin production without alarming their immune system.

Sigilon Therapeutics Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) granted Eli Lilly and Co. (NYSE:LLY) exclusive, worldwide rights to Sigilon’sType I diabetes program in a deal potentially worth over $470 million.

The startup is developing what it calls “living therapeutics” — drugs based on engineered cells that can fight a range of disorders when implanted in the body.

Today Sigilon is announcing a $473 million pact with Eli Lilly — which is stepping out under a bolder R&D chief in Dan Skovronsky — to drive their stem cell work on Type 1 diabetes into the clinic, with $63 million of that in an upfront and the rest divvied up with a goal of fully funding the development of a durable new therapy for the disease.

Medgadget editor Tom Peach recently spoke with Devyn Smith PhD, Chief Strategy Officer of Sigilon Therapeutics, to learn more about the company’s technology.

“Biotechs are surrounded by innovation; they make science fiction—a digital pill, 3D printing, wearable technology—a reality; are located in trendy tech hubs like San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston; and most importantly, they offer hope.”

A few months ago, Flagship unveiled Sigilon Therapeutics, a Cambridge startup that is aiming to develop a new class of “living therapeutics”

Four early-stage venture-funded biotechnology companies have signed leases at 100 Binney St. in Cambridge.

Sigilon’s allogeneic cell therapy implants offer long-term but flexible dosing

Venture investors are betting that cell therapies will bring about better treatments or even cures for a widening range of diseases.

The newco will use its biocompatible Afibromer technology to develop encapsulated cell therapies for hematologic, enzyme deficiency, endocrine and metabolic disorders.

Cell and gene therapies hold the promise of providing significant and durable health gains to patients in many disease states and have recently elicited significant investor and partner interest. We cover the current state of industry partnerships and investments, highlight what makes a partnership advantageous, and discuss implications for stem cell therapies.

Afibromer™ protein factories represent a flexible and programmable alternative to gene therapies.

When encapsulated with alginate derivatives that resist the foreign-body response, human embryonic stem cell–derived beta cells restore long-term normoglycemia in immunocompetent mice without the need for immunosuppression.

Implanted spheres of a broad variety of material classes significantly abrogate foreign body reactions and fibrosis in rodent and non-human primates when the spheres are larger than 1.5 mm in diameter.

In vivo screening of a large combinatorial library of alginates identifies materials that elicit a substantially reduced foreign body response.

Host recognition and immune-mediated foreign body response to biomaterials can compromise the performance of implanted medical devices.