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Biotech / Medical : ATIS is on the move! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marshall Teitelbaum who wrote (1725)	1/12/1999 11:15:00 PM
From: Rick Strange	Respond to of 2205

Marshall, I am hopeful that we will see the start of a pilot human trial this year. Yes, therapeutic range is a major consideration as is an equally important factor that we haven't discussed...fixation of the graft material for cartilage repair. It's my understanding that ATIS, and S&N, want to deliver a cartilage repair system that will use arthroscopic surgery. Arthroscopic procedures speed healing and dramatically shorten the hospital stay...third party payers like that. ATIS develops the tissue engineering technology and S&N develops the arthroscopic tools to achieve a stable fixation of the cartilage graft. ATIS is currently trying several methods of fixation on large animals. If these trials or studies are successful then I think that we will go to a pilot human trial of the best combination. This means that it is a much more complex issue than just developing the cartilage repair material and points out the symbiotic nature of the relationship between ATIS and S&N with its expertise in arthroscopic surgery tools. For those that doubt S&Ns interest in this project, consider if you will, for every dollar (or Euro) that S&N makes from the partnership from selling cartilage repair tissue, they will probably make two or more from selling the arthroscopic tools for the procedure.

To: Marshall Teitelbaum who wrote (1725)	1/18/1999 4:23:00 AM
From: Grashopper	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2205

As the late dearly departed; GOV. lawton Chiles used to say "this dog wont hunt"

To: Marshall Teitelbaum who wrote (1725)	1/18/1999 8:24:00 PM
From: Bruce Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2205

Marshall, Hope you had a nice holiday season. I'm still holding on to my shares at 5. I have a question and as always your the man. Do you know if it is possible to engineer cardiac tissue in vitro at this time? If so, does the tissue have all the properties of normal cardiac tissue; i.e., elasticity, contractility, electrically active(sodium channels, calcium channels, K channels, etc.), and anisotropy. What I'm kinda getting at is that if technology does not allow the ability to engineer a whole heart, is it not possible that heart tissue could be grown in the lab then surgically grafted to a patient in very late stage heart failure? I know that frequently Bautista procedures are now done to decrease the diameter of the left ventricle in attempts to increase contractility, but this procedure has a very high rate of mortality and morbidity. I'm wondering why not a Bautista procedure but instead of just taking out a small pie section, why not remove the whole left ventricle and graft in a new one. I can only assume that because no one has done it, yet, is because the technology to engineer cardiac tissue is still science fiction. Although, I thought I read somewhere that any organ tissue can now be grown in the lab, except the problem is engineering it into the correct three-dimensional matrix that is required for it to function. However, how complex are the ventricles? It's not like a kidney, liver, or pancreas. I've already seen the pictures of the engineered valves, so how far away could we be from myocardium. As always your opinion is always appreciated. Regards, Bruce Long