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Minutia receives $300,000 grant from The National Institutes of Health

Berkeley, CA September 15, 2021 – Minutia, Inc., an innovative Oakland and Berkeley-based life sciences startup, announced today the award of a $300,000.00 grant from The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency, to help advance Minutia’s mission to create a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes. The grant will directly fund Minutia’s ongoing work with subcutaneous transplants of insulin-producing cells. Specifically, the grant supports the development of a technology that allows visibility into how such cell transplants respond to their environment in the early days after surgery – with the long-term goal of improving the overall health of the cells and making such transplants successful.

“We are honored to launch this collaboration with NIH,” stated Katy Digovich, Minutia’s co-founder and CEO. “As someone who has been living with Type 1 diabetes for over 25 years, I have followed NIH-sponsored research since I was young”.  

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.

Combined with additional grants from JDRF and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, JRDF’s award positions Minutia as a key player in the development of Type 1 diabetes therapeutics and potential cures.

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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.