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

stem cells CardioCell

CardioCell, a new San Diego biotech spun out of privately held Stemedica Cell Technologies, stepped into the light today, saying it is beginning a mid-stage clinical study in the United States to evaluate the use of its proprietary stem cells to treat patients with heart attacks.

The company says it’s also beginning a late-stage trial of the intravenous administration of its stem cell therapy for heart attack patients in the Republic of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The Kazakhstan Ministry of Health and local licensee Altaco are sponsoring the study.

CardioCell CEO Sergey Sikora tells me he was recruited by Stemedica to head CardioCell when the company was founded last July. He was previously the senior vice president of business development at GenWay, a San Diego company that provides proteins, antibodies, and other lab supplies.

A group of independent investors provided Series A funding in October. CardioCell has not disclosed the investors or the amount of funding, but Sikora says it is sufficient to cover several clinical trials that CardioCell is sponsoring in the United States. The company says it is evaluating its stem-cell technology to treat patients with heart attacks, chronic heart failure, and peripheral artery disease.

“While stem-cell therapy for cardiovascular diseases is nothing new, CardioCell is bringing to the field a new, unique type of stem-cell technology that has the possibility of being more effective than other” treatments for heart attack, says Dr. Stephen Epstein, chairman of CardioCell’s scientific advisory board, in a statement from the company. Epstein is the

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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.