The Hamilton Spectator recently interviewed Dr. Harald Stover and Maria Antonakos (BA 1992), co-founders of H2i venture Allarta Life Science, to discuss their new cell-based therapy, which alleviates the need for insulin injections and immune-suppressive drugs.
Allarta Life Science is a pre-clinical life science company based in Hamilton, developing next generation biomaterials for immune-privileged delivery of cells, stem cells and biologics. Their technology would encapsulate the islets in a gel that allows cells to be transplanted and prevents them from being seen by the immune system. In the future, the Allarta Life Science team expects to be able to use stem cell-derived islets to treat a much larger number of patients for conditions beyond Type 1 diabetes.