International Stem Cell Corporation

International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCO), founded in 2001, is a publicly traded biotechnology company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. ISCO developed a stem cell technology known as parthenogenesis, which uses unfertilized human eggs to create parthenogenetic stem cells (hpSC). The advantages of hpSC are that they are pluripotent stem cells that provide a way to work around the problem of immune system rejection of foreign cells and that they also avoid the need to destroy fertilized embryos during research. The leadership team of ISCO includes Andrey Semechkin, Ph.D., chief executive officer and cochairman of the board; Simon Craw, Ph.D., executive vice president of business development; Jay Novak, chief financial officer; and Ruslan Semechkin, Ph.D., chief scientific officer.

Originally, ISCO scientists were seeking a stem cell treatment for ...