With a market capitalization of more than $350 million, Ocata Therapeutics is a major player in the stem cell space. Based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, it is a clinical stage biotech company that develops a range of regenerative therapies for the treatment of ophthalmologic conditions.

By 2010, Ocata Therapeutics (at the time called “Advanced Cell Therapy”) began experimenting with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This was only four years after research and experimentation using mouse cells at Kyoto University first generated iPSCs in 2006, and only three years after a series of follow-up experiments done at Kyoto University successfully transformed human adult cells into iPSCs in 2007. Due to concerns with the use of iPSCs for therapeutic applications, the company shifted its approach to using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) for clinical trial purposes, as well as other pluripotent cell types. [Read more…]