Retina Institute Japan K.K., which employes Nobel Prize-winning stem-cell technology to treat eye diseases, plans to sell a stake in itself to a group of Japanese companies next month, ahead of a possible initial public offering in five years.

The company will raise ¥1 billion from the sale to fund development of a treatment for age-related macular degeneration — a leading cause of blindness in the elderly — using technology developed by the Riken research institute, Retina Chief Executive Officer Hardy Kagimoto said.

After raising about ¥32 billion so far from investors, Retina is developing technology from a discovery that jointly won Kyoto University professor Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in October for turning ordinary skin cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.