A handful of media outlets today
carried stories about the public stock offering announced yesterday
by Cellular Dynamics International, Inc., a Wisconsin firm that will
benefit to the tune of $16 million-plus from the California stem cell agency.

Kathleen Gallagher of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel described the company, founded by stem cell pioneer
Jamie Thomson, as in the business of making “fully functioning human cells in industrial quantities.”

Judy Newman of the Wisconsin State
Journal in Madison, where the company is based, quoted Beth Donley,
chief executive of Stemina
Biomarker Discovery, as saying,

Thomson is a professor both at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison and at UC Santa Barbara, and we
queried Dennis Clegg, co-director of the Center for Stem Cell
Biology and Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, about the school's
ties to Cellular Dynamics, which hopes to take in $57 million in its public offering.

He replied in an email that Santa
Barbara has a collaboration with Cellular Dynamics and the University
of Wisconsin to develop a vision-restoring, stem-cell-based therapy
for people with advanced retinal diseases. That $900,000 effort is financed by the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

The California stem cell agency grant
to Cellular Dynamics is for work at the stem cell bank being created
at the Buck Institute in Novato, north of San Francisco.

The Milwaukee Business Journal and
Genomeweb also carried stories on the IPO.