Oliver, I thought that I would repost this news to show the connection between BTRN and Dr. Cosimi. Great find!
BIOTRANSPLANT AND MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL RENEW COLLABORATION IN TRANSPLANTATION RESEARCH
Charlestown, MA, December 4, 2000 - BioTransplant Incorporated (Nasdaq: BTRN) and Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Transplantation Biology Research Center (TBRC) today announced the renewal of their collaborative research agreement in the transplantation of cells, tissues and organs. This collaboration aims to extend upon advancements already achieved by the two groups in allotransplantation and xenotransplantation. The ultimate goals of the collaboration are to pioneer new approaches to prevent the need for long-term immunosuppressive treatment in the transplantation of human organs and enable functional tolerance of these transplanted tissues and organs. Allotransplantation involves transplantation between individuals of the same species, and xenotransplantation, between individuals of different species.
Under the terms of this five year agreement, BioTransplant will continue to fund a portion of the research of Dr. David Sachs and other MGH scientists, including Drs. Megan Sykes, and A. Benedict Cosimi in the area of organ and tissue transplantation. MGH has granted BioTransplant exclusive worldwide royalty-bearing rights to technology and inventions developed in the course of BioTransplant’s funded research, subject to royalty to be paid to MGH and subject to the usual retention rights of the United States Government.
BioTransplant’s approach to transplantation, functional tolerance, (ImmunoCognance™), is based on work pioneered by Dr. Sachs. ImmunoCognance™ may allow the recipient’s immune system to accept donor tissue as "self" without compromising the recipient’s immune defenses. This is achieved by mixing elements of the donor’s immune system with that of the recipient. The AlloMune™ Transplant System, for human-to-human transplantation, and the XenoMune™ System, for the transplantation of organs from BioTransplant’s proprietary miniswine into humans, contains a number of advanced approaches which are designed to facilitate the acceptance of donor tissue by the human immune system.
Most recently, this collaboration successfully developed a novel strategy for the induction of tolerance in pancreatic islet cell transplantation across allogeneic (species) barriers. This technique may have practical application in pig-to-human xenotransplantation for the treatment of diabetes using BioTransplant’s proprietary ImmunoCognance™ technology. Further successes include a patent that describes a novel method of modifying swine cells, organs and tissues so they can be transplanted into a human recipient with reduced danger of rejection by natural killer (NK) cells and preliminary results for a novel, less toxic treatment for lymphoma and leukemia.
"Our collaboration with MGH has created advances in cancer, as well as in bone marrow and organ transplantation," said Dr. Elliot Lebowitz, BioTransplant’s President and C.E.O. "Extending this productive partnership should benefit many more patients in the future and help BioTransplant achieve commercial success."
"We believe that our renewed collaboration with BioTransplant will allow us to continue to make progress toward the re-programming of a recipient’s immune system to recognize and accept donor cells or tissue as ‘self’," says Dr. Sachs of MGH. "In addition, BioTransplant’s protocols and technology in combination with our research have the potential to solve the problem of organ donor shortage and eliminate chronic immunosuppressive drug use."
The Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School and conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States. The MGH has major research centers in transplantation biology, the neurosciences, cardiovascular research, cancer, AIDS, cutaneous biology and photomedicine. Along with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the MGH is a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. an integrated health care delivery system comprising the two academic medical centers, specialty and community hospitals, a network of physician groups and non-acute and home health services. |
