New San Diego Biotech Charts Stem-Cell Therapies for Heart Disease

stem cells CardioCell

director of translational and vascular biology research at the MedStar Heart Institute near Washington, DC.

Under an exclusive license from Stemedica, CardioCell says it is developing mesenchymal stem cells grown under oxygen-deprived conditions, which makes them better suited to reach areas in the heart where blood flow is inadequate, due to cardiovascular disease. The company is testing the idea that its ischemia-tolerant mesenchymal stem cells express higher levels of molecules associated with healing and repairing blood vessels.

The studies are designed to determine if CardioCell can evoke a more potent healing response that will reduce the death of heart cells during a heart attack, and decrease the amount of resulting scar tissue, Epstein says in the company’s statement. A mid-stage trial taking place at Emory University, Sanford Health, and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center is intended to evaluate the safety and efficacy of CardioCell’s stem-cell technology. Heart attack patients enrolled in the study will get a single intravenous dose of allogeneic mesenchymal bone-marrow cells.

CardioCell is carrying on clinical development that began at Stemedica, a biotech that supplies adult allogenic stem cells that have been isolated and expanded from bone marrow donated by 18- to 25-year-olds.

Stemedica was founded in San Diego to advance stem-cell technology that began in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States. The founders started Stemedica in 2005, during a period when federally funded stem cell research was restricted in the United States under an executive order signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush.

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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.