Feature
EndGenitor: Advancing Discoveries, Bringing Jobs to Indiana
December 21, 2006
Stem cell start-up makes business out of blood
Mervin Yoder, left, and David Ingram discovered how the body makes the cells that line its blood vessels. Yoder co-founded EndGenitor Technologies Inc., Indiana's first adult vascular stem cell company-in 2005.
Business may not be in Dr. Mervin Yoder’s blood, but blood is vital to the new start-up business he recently co-founded, EndGenitor Technologies Inc.
Building on his discovery, along with colleague Dr. David Ingram, of how the body makes the cells that line its blood vessels, the new company has the potential to advance cell-based therapies in medicine and bring scores of jobs to the Hoosier state.
“I consider myself a researcher first and doctor second. I don’t know how much of a businessman I am,” joked Yoder, who is the Richard and Pauline Klingler Professor in the IU School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics.
Yoder's research prowess was in full force in 2004, when he and Ingram made a landmark discovery of the “ancestor” cells that enable the body to create endothelial cells. The origin of these endothelial cells, which play a vital role in the body’s circulatory system and internal organs, had been uncertain. But by extracting and comparing cells from adult blood and infant umbilical cords, the IU team was able to isolate the parents—the progenitors—of the cells and explain how they differ from related cells. The progenitor cells the researchers identified are adult type stem cells, but they proliferate much like embryonic stem cells, and they can be grown in large quantities in the laboratory, said Yoder.
To capitalize on their discovery and take it from the laboratory into a clinical setting, Ingram and Yoder along with Dr. Carlos Lopez and Ron Henriksen formed EndGenitor Technologies Inc.—Indiana’s first adult vascular stem cell company—in 2005. Using those ancestor cells, EndGenitor creates cell therapy products to treat people with circulation problems in their arms and legs, those who have heart disease, or those with other problems involving blood vessels and circulation. (Yoder and Ingram are working with adult stem cells and related progenitor cells that are destined to become endothelial cells, not the embryonic stem cells that are controversial and are subject to restrictions in federal government funding for research.)
“There’s a huge potential for this [therapy],” said Yoder. “With patients who have vascular problems, their doctors would like to repair the abnormality by giving them new parts. These cells would be the parts.”
Yoder said he believes that the therapeutic use of adult stem cells will provide a new therapy for the practice of medicine and that EndGenitor Technologies Inc. will play a leading role in the discovery and development of cell therapies for treating chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging. Currently, EndGenitor is working to get the cells into a clinical trial in order to prove that they really do have therapeutic benefits for patients with blood vessel disorders.
EndGenitor plans to market test kits for researchers that will enable them to determine whether their samples contain the endothelial stem and progenitor cells. Ingram said these kits should be of interest to scientists testing compounds they hope would block the growth of blood vessels, which in turn could block the growth of tumors. Similarly, cardiovascular specialists would be interested, hoping to find compounds that promote the growth or repair of blood vessels.
Housed in IU’s business incubator, the Emerging Technologies Center (IUETC) in downtown Indianapolis, EndGenitor is being groomed for growth. In fact, since its inception in 2005, the company has hired 10 employees—and Yoder predicts many more.
“We hope our clinical applications will show that these cells really help repair vessels in patients. If that’s true, I anticipate a very large manufacturing operation,” he said. This would mean more high-paying job opportunities for Indiana’s college graduates.
Indiana University is making important contributions to the start-up company, most notably in terms of brain power and other resources offered through the IUETC.
“The intellectual stimulation we receive from our colleagues at IU is huge,” said Yoder. “Whether on the medical center campus, in clinics, or research labs, we really have access to people thinking of all the cutting-edge ways these cells can be used. Our facility at the Emerging Technologies Center is state-of-the-art as well. We are currently able to do anything we want on site without having to outsource our assays.”
If Yoder has his way, though, EndGenitor won’t be at the IUETC for much longer. “We hope we’ll outgrow it in a few years,” he said. And if the company grows because of its success with the development of its cell therapy products, the thousands of Hoosiers with circulation and blood vessel diseases will be grateful for this success.
