VistaGen, a South San Francisco based biotech company, is using pluripotent stem cell technologies to develop a new generation of cost-effective, clinically-relevant drug screening systems, offering the possibility of identifying potential toxicity issues early in the drug development process, well before massive amounts of money are lost in developing a drug that is later determined to be toxic to the human heart. It also means that promising new drugs currently shelved because of heart safety concerns can now be economically re-investigated for safer variants, potentially resulting in highly profitable new therapies that would otherwise never make it to market.
The financial potential of VistaGen’s stem cell technology was not lost on Singh, who began his career as a corporate finance attorney in Silicon Valley, and went on to serve in key executive positions with other successful biopharmaceutical and medical device companies, in addition to his tenure as a venture capitalist focused on the biotechnology sector. The possibility of using leading-edge stem cell biology to leverage and potentially recover billions of dollars previously invested by the pharmaceutical industry and thought to be lost in the development of now shelved drugs is too big for the industry to ignore.
VistaGen’s founder, H. Ralph Snodgrass, a Ph.D., is a recognized expert in pioneering stem cell research. Dr. Snodrass has extensive research experience as a professor at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in North Carolina, and as a member of the Institute for Immunology in Switzerland. He is a past board member of the Emerging Company Section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and has many years of experience in the use of stem cells as biological tools for drug discovery and development. Dr. Snodgrass now serves as VistaGen’s President and Chief Scientific Officer, driving the company’s technical progress.
For additional information, visit the company’s website at www.VistaGen.com
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