Sernova, JDRF announce collaboration to research hypoglycemic unawareness

Sernova Corp. and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation have announced a joint collaboration to advance human clinical trials of technologies for treatment of hypoglycemia unawareness in patients with severe type 1 diabetes, according to a press release.

JDRF will provide Sernova up to $2.45 million to support a clinical trial at a major transplantation center in the United States. The goal of the study is to provide patients with hypoglycemia unawareness a novel cell therapy treatment that utilizes a highly vascularized, cell macroencapsulated implantable and scalable device to reduce or eliminate the need for exogenous insulin injections, according to the release.

“JDRF is excited about this collaboration, which advances research in encapsulated cell therapies, and will continue to drive progress toward our mission to accelerate life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent and treat type 1 diabetes and its complications,” Derek Rapp, JDRF president and CEO, stated in the release.

“We see our work with JDRF on this important clinical trial as an exciting opportunity to more rapidly advance Sernova’s therapies to treat people with diabetes and address many of the shortcomings and challenges of current insulin therapy,” Philip Toleikis, PhD, president and CEO of Sernova, stated in the release.

Disclosure: Rapp is president and CEO of the JDRF. Toleikis is president and CEO of Sernova Corp.