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The Odyssey of a Stem Cell Company : Lessons and Insights

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Ten years ago, International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCO) consisted of a brilliant Russian scientist and a small group of serial entrepreneur/venture capitalists, meeting in a living room to share a vision of providing a treatment for diabetes. Today ISCO is a vibrant public company with unique scientific technology and a market value in excess of $100 million. The story of how that happened is a saga of scientific achievement in the face of hostile government regulation, a collapsing capital market, and academic and business rivalries that provides a fascinating look at the forces that shape, make or break a new company in the medical science arena.

Ken Aldrich, co‐founder and executive chairman of International Stem Cell Corporation will tell that story to illustrate the process, pitfalls and triumphs that await the founders of a startup company with a technology and a dream.

ISCO has invented and owns the intellectual property for a new class of human pluripotentstem cells. Its "Human Parthenogenetic Stem Cell Lines" (hpSCs) are pluripotentlines with two unique features: (1) they do not involve the use of viable human embryos, thus removing the ethical debate surrounding embryonic cell lines, and (2) they have the potential to solve the dilemma of immune rejection without using autologouscells, thus creating the potential for a Universal Stem Cell Source Bank from which any patient could draw cells to match his or her immune system.

Aldrich has been active in the investment business since 1975, and in early stage venture capital since 1993. He is an active member of Tech Coast Angels, the largest Angel organization in the United States, and has provided early‐stage funding and management assistance to a variety of successful start‐up companies, including WaveTecVision Systems, a VC backed ophthalmic device company, and Green Dot Corporation, the world’s largest issuer of prepaid debit cards and other banking services to the Nation’s 70 million “unbanked.”

Aldrich holds degrees, with honors, from both Harvard University and Harvard Law School and practiced law with the Los Angeles‐based firm of O’Melveny & Myers before leaving in 1969 to build a career in finance.