Minutia Receives Phase I SBIR Grant from National Institutes of Health
Berkeley, CA July, 2024 – Minutia, Inc., an innovative Oakland and Berkeley-based life sciences startup, announced today the award of a Phase I SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), administered through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), to help advance Minutia’s mission to create a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes.
This grant will support the development of stem cell-derived islets that are resistant to allogeneic and antigen-specific autoimmune attack after transplantation using proprietary modifications. Funds will also support further development of Minutia’s proprietary nanosensor technology to measure the intracellular response to inflammation. Non-invasive monitoring of grafts will allow identification of events that lead up to graft failure, opening a window for therapeutic intervention such as local or systemic anti-inflammatory or immunosuppressive treatment to prevent graft loss.
Housed in the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub at the University of California, the company began operations in January 2021, and has already demonstrated the efficacy of their robust insulin-producing cells and their intracellular sensors in animal models. In addition, Minutia has a proof of concept of their less-invasive transplant protocol in a PI-led phase 1/2 clinical trial.
Together with previous grants from the NIH, Breakthrough T1D and CIRM, this latest NIH grant award positions Minutia as a key player in the development of Type 1 diabetes therapeutics and potential cures.
Minutia is a preclinical biotechnology company developing a unique approach to transplants of insulin-producing cells designed to lead to a cure for diabetes. Based in Oakland and Berkeley, CA, Minutia was launched in 2021 as a commercial spinout to research conducted at Duke University and UCSF.
