In Development of Bio-Engineered Skin Tissue, Third Try is Charm for Advanced BioHealing

[Corrected 12/29/09, 3:40 pm. See below.] When it comes to commercializing a bio-engineered human skin substitute that could be used to treat diabetic ulcers and other tissue damage, Kathy McGee has the benefit of a long view.

McGee tells me she arrived in San Diego from Ireland in 1992 to work for Advanced Tissue Sciences (ATS). The pioneering biomedical startup raised hundreds of millions of dollars and spent 15 years developing its human tissue products before filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in late 2002. ATS then passed the baton to Smith & Nephew, the London-based medical products giant that had been its partner in a joint venture to manufacture its product line. In a 2003 deal approved by the bankruptcy court, ATS sold the global rights to its Dermagraft tissue substitute and related technologies and manufacturing facilities in La Jolla to the British company. Smith & Nephew tried without success to commercialize the technology itself—and ultimately sold the same rights and facilities in 2006 to Advanced BioHealing, a regenerative medical technology company that has a headquarters in Westport, CT and a manufacturing facility in San Diego.

Kathy McGee
Kathy McGee

“I was here for the startup and the shutdown and the restart,” quips McGee, who is now a vice president with Advanced BioHealing and general manager of the company’s San Diego operation. She joined ATS five years after it was founded, and worked in various capacities during the company’s early stage of development. She stayed on as Smith & Nephew’s director of manufacturing. And a few years later, as a member of Smith & Nephew’s shutdown team, McGee says, “I signed my layoff letter from Smith & Nephew in the morning, and signed my employment letter from Advanced BioHealing in the same afternoon.”

Now Advanced Biohealing could someday serve as the definitive case study in how the third time is the charm when it comes to building a complex medical products company. “The two companies that were based here before us were unsuccessful in making a business with this product,” McGee says.

Advanced BioHealing re-launched the business in 2007, focusing solely on the sale of 2-inch by 3-inch Dermagraft patches, which are derived from

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.