ViaCyte Appoints Sandra E. Poole to Board of Directors

SAN DIEGO, June 27, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ViaCyte, Inc., a privately-held regenerative medicine company, today announced the appointment of Sandra E. Poole to the Company's Board of Directors. Ms. Poole brings more than 25 years of biopharmaceutical experience in product development, from research through commercialization, to ViaCyte's team. 

"We welcome Sandra to ViaCyte's Board of Directors, as the company continues to make progress in its clinical trials towards the goal of delivering a potential functional cure to patients with type 1 diabetes," said Fred Middleton, Chairman of ViaCyte's Board of Directors. "Sandra has dedicated her career to developing life-changing therapies for patients; she brings tremendous expertise and knowledge in the area of product manufacturing which is of growing importance to us as we look toward the future scale-up of production and potential regulatory approval of our cell therapy for patients." 

"ViaCyte has been a clear leader in the field of developing cell replacement therapies, and I am honored to join the Board of Directors," said Poole. "I am excited to provide my operations and CMC experience as ViaCyte makes steady progress in clinical research and development on the PEC-Encap and PEC-Direct product candidates." 

Ms. Poole most recently served as the Chief Operating Officer of LogicBio Therapeutics, Inc., a genome editing company. At LogicBio, Ms. Poole was responsible for leading the company's internal operations, including all technical functions, quality and regulatory, and supported a successful initial public offering. Prior to LogicBio, Ms. Poole held executive roles of increasing responsibility at ImmunoGen, Inc., a company developing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to treat cancer. While at ImmunoGen, she built technical development and CMC capabilities and built a network of contract manufacturing organizations to manufacture ADCs. Before joining ImmunoGen, Ms. Poole spent more than 15 years in global manufacturing and development leadership positions at Genzyme (now Sanofi Genzyme). Ms. Poole currently serves on the Board of Directors of Retrophin and the Supervisory Board for Valneva, SE, a France-based vaccine company. Ms. Poole holds a M.A.Sc. and B.A.Sc. in chemical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. 

About ViaCyte
ViaCyte is a privately held regenerative medicine company developing novel cell replacement therapies as potential long-term diabetes treatments to achieve glucose control targets and reduce the risk of hypoglycemia and diabetes-related complications. ViaCyte's product candidates are based on the derivation of pancreatic progenitor cells from pluripotent stem cells, which are then implanted in durable and retrievable cell delivery devices. Once implanted and matured, these cells are designed to secrete insulin and other pancreatic hormones in response to blood glucose levels. ViaCyte has two product candidates in clinical-stage development. The PEC-Direct™ product candidate delivers the pancreatic progenitor cells in a non-immunoprotective device and is being developed for type 1 diabetes patients who have hypoglycemia unawareness, extreme glycemic lability, and/or recurrent severe hypoglycemic episodes. The PEC-Encap™ (also known as VC-01) product candidate delivers the same pancreatic progenitor cells in an immunoprotective device and is being developed for all patients with diabetes, type 1 and type 2, who use insulin. ViaCyte is also developing immune-evasive stem cell lines, from its proprietary CyT49 cell line, which have the potential to further broaden the availability of cell therapy for diabetes and other potential indications. ViaCyte is headquartered in San Diego, California. ViaCyte is funded in part by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and JDRF. For more information on ViaCyte, please visit www.viacyte.com and connect with ViaCyte on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

SOURCE ViaCyte, Inc.

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