ASTM news, not complaining cause I had a nice pile but this news had to of leaked yesterday...
Aastrom Biosciences, Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation Partner to Develop Novel Treatments for Tissue Regeneration
Tuesday June 10, 7:01 am ET
-- Alliance Brings Together Industry Leaders in Stem Cells and Orthopedic Medicine --
ANN ARBOR, Mich., and EDISON, N.J., June 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. (NasdaqSC: ASTM) and Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) today announced a strategic alliance to jointly develop and commercialize innovative treatments for the regeneration of tissues such as bone and cartilage. The companies will initially focus on combining their respective technologies to establish a novel treatment approach for bone graft applications. This market is estimated at over 1.4 million procedures annually, including spinal fusions, non-union fractures, dental defects and facial bone repair, and is expected to exhibit progressive growth in the future.
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The partnership aligns an industry leader in stem cell therapies (Aastrom) with the leading provider of allograft, or donor-derived tissue, matrices (MTF) to form a coordinated business and clinical approach for new products and treatments needed in orthopedic medicine. Under the terms of the alliance, the companies will provide each other with rights to their respective technologies for treatments and products that are based on combinations of MTF's matrices and Aastrom's Tissue Repair Cells (TRCs). The companies will share in the development and clinical trial expense of these treatment approaches and products, and will adopt a coordinated promotion and marketing strategy for future products. In addition to allograft-based bone graft treatments, the companies will explore new approaches for the regeneration of joint cartilage, as well as effective combinations of TRCs with MTF's new ceramic matrix technology.
"This strategic alliance gives Aastrom the partner we have been seeking in the orthopedic field, and will allow us to combine our capabilities and resources to jointly develop and then market an effective alternative to the current standard bone graft procedures," said R. Douglas Armstrong, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Aastrom. "MTF is the world's largest and most respected allograft matrix provider, and its decision to partner with Aastrom validates our strategic position and focus on the commercial development of our bone and cartilage regeneration programs. This alliance, supported by MTF's technology, expertise and funding, should enable us to bring our technology through the regulatory and logistics pipeline and into the marketplace in the near term."
"We are very excited to be working with Aastrom in the area of stem cell technology. We believe that the combination of bone progenitor cells with the native architecture and compatibility provided by allograft tissues will produce a superior graft equal to the 'gold standard' of the patient's own tissues," said Bruce W. Stroever, President and Chief Executive Officer of MTF. "We believe this alliance brings together the business and technology components needed to pioneer the next era in orthopedic medicine, and maximize the beneficial use of the precious resource of donated tissue."
Aastrom has developed a powerful technology capable of producing a stem cell-based cell mixture from a small sample of the patient's own cells. These cells -- called Tissue Repair Cells -- have been shown in clinical trials to generate normal human tissues safely and reliably in patients. The Company has demonstrated in laboratory research that its TRCs contain more than a 70- fold increase in the number of bone-forming cell types, compared with the patient's own bone marrow.
Traditional bone grafting procedures, which use autograft, require the collection of bone and marrow by removing bone chips from a patient's own hip, an invasive surgical process resulting in acute and chronic pain, as well as long-term complications. In an attempt to eliminate this undesirable procedure, MTF has developed various forms of bone matrices from donated tissues. The companies believe that combining these matrices with Aastrom's TRCs will bring together all the components needed to regenerate bone similarly to autograft, and will eliminate the undesirable and painful surgical procedure currently needed to provide the autograft.
About Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. |
