Fate Therapeutics recognized with Red Herring's North America 100 award

Jun 28 2010

Fate Therapeutics, Inc. announced today that the Company received Red Herring's North America 100 award, a prestigious list honoring the year's most promising private and innovative companies from the North American business region. The nominees were evaluated by the Red Herring editorial team on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy and integration into their respective industries. Fate Therapeutics was recognized for advancing a therapeutic pipeline with substantial potential to meet large unmet medical needs and for accelerating the industrialization of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology. Fate's award-winning, proprietary iPSC technology platform utilizes the most advanced reprogramming and differentiation technologies to generate cell types of interest to elucidate disease biology and identify targets for therapeutic intervention.

"We are honored to be recognized as a leader in North America for our innovative approach to stem cell medicines to treat diseases and conditions that currently have limited treatment options and for our relentless pursuit of accelerating new technologies to improve drug discovery and development for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry," said Paul Grayson, president and CEO of Fate Therapeutics. "We would not be here without our team of world-class scientific founders, investors, collaborators and employees, and we look forward to continuing to build on our successes not only for our supporters but also for patients in need of new therapies and for the ongoing scientific and economic leadership of the region."

Winners of the 2010 edition of the Red Herring 100 North America award are expected to lead the next wave of disruption and innovation and are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. The winners were announced on Thursday night at the conclusion of the Red Herring North America 2010 conference in San Diego, California after an extensive review of applicant qualifications and on-site presentations to the editorial team. This unique assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the actual track record and standing of a company, which allows Red Herring to see past the "buzz" and make the list an invaluable instrument for discovering and advocating the greatest business opportunities in the industry.

"This year was especially difficult," said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. "Despite the global economic situation, there were many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products that we had a difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Fate Therapeutics shows great promise and therefore deserves to be among the winners."

Because iPSCs have been shown to behave similarly to embryonic stem cells with the ability to differentiate into various cell types, such as cardiomyocytes, hepatocytes, neurons and pancreatic cells and can be created from any adult somatic cell, like a skin cell, iPSC technology has significant commercial and medical value. Fate is using iPSC technology to create adult stem and progenitor cells to find new stem cell modulators, small molecule and biologic drugs with broad therapeutic applications in hematopoietic reconstitution, regenerative medicine, traumatic injuries and cancer. Fate's iPSC technology platform includes exclusive licenses from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research for foundational iPSC technology invented by Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch and from The Scripps Research Institute for the protein and small molecule reprogramming breakthroughs of Dr. Sheng Ding. The protein-based reprogramming breakthrough was honored as the Top Technology of 2009 by The Scientist, and the Company's iPSC technology received the 2009 North American Technology Innovation Award from Frost & Sullivan. Fate was also named as one of Technology Review's 2010 TR50, the publication's first annual list of the 50 most innovative companies in the world.