Nearly half a million Americans with kidney disease are on dialysis, so it’s not surprising the CIRM Board had no hesitation, back in July 2016, in funding a program to make it easier and safer to get that life-saving therapy.

That’s why it’s gratifying to now hear that Humacyte, the company behind this new dialysis device, has just signed a $150 million deal with Fresenius Medical Care, to make their product more widely available.

The CIRM Board gave Humacyte $10 million for a Phase 3 clinical trial to test a bioengineered vein needed by people undergoing hemodialysis, the most common form of dialysis.

The vein – called a human acellular vessel or HAV – is implanted in the arm and used to carry the patient’s blood to and from an artificial kidney that removes waste from the blood. Current synthetic versions of this device have many problems, including clotting, infections and rejection. In tests, Humacyte’s HAV has fewer complications. In addition, over time the patient’s own stem cells start to populate the bioengineered vein, in effect making it part of the patient’s own body.

Fresenius Medical Care is investing $150 million in Humacyte, with a plan to use the device in its dialysis clinics worldwide. As an indication of how highly they value the device, the deal grants Fresenius a 19% ownership stake in the company.

In an interview with FierceBiotech, Jeff Lawson, Humacyte’s Chief Medical Officer, said if all goes well the company plans to file for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2019 and hopes it will be widely available in 2020.

In addition to being used for kidney disease the device is also being tested for peripheral artery disease, vascular trauma and other cardiovascular indications. Lawson says testing the device first in kidney disease will provide a solid proving ground for it.

“It’s a very safe place to develop new vascular technologies under clinical study. From a regulatory safety standpoint, this is the first area we could enter safely and work with the FDA to get approval for a complete new technology.”

This is another example of what we call CIRM’s “value proposition”; the fact that we don’t just provide funding, we also provide support on many other levels and that has a whole range of benefits. When our Grants Working Group – the independent panel of experts who review our scientific applications – and the CIRM Board approves a project it’s like giving it the CIRM Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. That doesn’t just help that particular project, it can help attract further investment in the company behind it, enabling it to expand operations and create jobs and ultimately, we hope, help advance the field as a whole.

Those benefits are substantial. To date we have been able to use our funding to leverage around $2 billion in additional dollars in terms of outside companies investing in companies like Humacyte, or researchers using data from research we funded to get additional funding from agencies like the National Institutes of Health.

So, when a company like Humacyte is the object of such a lucrative agreement it’s not just a compliment to the quality of the work they do, it’s also a reflection of our ability to pick great projects.