BIOMD: JUST $860k FROM A REVOLUTIONARY COW PATCH
March 12th 2009 22:31
Thursday February 19, 2009
Daily news on ASX-listed biotechnology companies
* ASX UP, BIOTECH DOWN: UNIVERSAL UP 10%, POLARTECH DOWN 10%
* BIOMD: JUST $860k FROM A REVOLUTIONARY COW PATCH
* TG4010 WITH VIRAX CO-X-GENE SHOWS LUNG CANCER BENEFIT
* FDA OKAYS VET USE OF MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS’ METHOXYFLURANE
* ARANA AXES PMX53 FOR EYE DISEASE
* QRX BEGINS 2nd DUAL OPIOD TRIAL FOR SEVERE POST-OP PAIN
* CYTOPIA RESPONDS TO PROGEN MEETINGS; PROGEN HAS $73m CASH
* ATCOR POSTS $181k MAIDEN H1 PROFIT; SALES UP 76% TO $5.4m
* PETER VASSILEFF INCREASES TO 17% OF PHARMAUST
* RMIT OFFERS TWO NEW LIFE SCIENCE GRAD CERT PROGRAMS
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BIOMD
Biomd’s executive director Robert Towner and managing director Michael Bennett have been wearing out shoe leather to bring their revolutionary bovine cardiac patch to market.
In Melbourne and Sydney to see investors, potential partners and media, the pair are absolutely committed to the Freemantle Heart Institute technology invented by the company’s chief scientific officer Prof William (Leon) Neethling.
Mr Towner says raising the $860,000 through the one-for-two rights issue at two cents has not been easy and he’s talking to high net worth friends, but is almost dismissive of the problem. “I’ll get the $860,000,” he says with determination.
Mr Bennett partly explains the secret to Biomd’s Adapt tissue engineering process as removing all cells, RNA and DNA and effectively leaving a clean collagen scaffolding, but he won’t give away the “eleven different herbs and spices” that are central to the process.
He does say that the process “manipulates the collagen helix structure”.
The material goes through a two week “time, temperature and chemical” process making the end product sterile, but it is then put through a further terminal sterilization step.
The product is “like wet silk” and can be freeze dried returning to 97 percent efficiency.
Mr Bennett says it is pliable, elastic, durable and strong and has a wealth of preclinical data to support the South African phase II trial, which has enrolled 20 of its 50 patients, with four already passed the six month observation point.
When 12 month monitoring is completed the next step is a US Food and Drug Administration 510k application as an equivalent device for market registration.
He says his patch has significant advantages over both synthetic and other bovine and equine based pericardial patches.
He says the synthetics develop problems relating to their rigidity and need to be replaced, sometimes requiring greater surgical intervention than the original medical problem.
The animal-based tissues can be consumed by the host body or develop calcification, which his doesn’t.
“It is a totally and utterly benign collagen scaffold.”
The material is intended for use in hole-in-the-heart operations, Sanvenero-Rosselli procedures for cleft palate, ventral and septal defects as well as pelvic floor repair and heart valve replacement.
He said Biomd would “derisk products with our technology”.
“Plastic mesh for pelvic floor reconstruction doesn’t work in the long term,” Mr Bennett said. “It becomes fibrotic, it shrinks, causes adhesions and pain and can erode back into the vagina or rectum and has a 15-20 percent occurrence rate.”
“We can overcome the problems with synthetics and it’s not a xeno-transplant because it is not living tissue.”
“It is a scaffold that allows the patients own tissue to regrow,” Mr Bennett said.
He is hoping for approval to conduct a pilot trial at a leading Sydney public hospital by the middle of 2009.
Other uses of the Adapt process include catheter introduction of replacement heart valves, which is being trialed in sheep, but it can also be used to create kangaroo patches which are thinner and stronger than bovine tissue.
Finally, he says researchers “have grown mesenchymal stem cells on our patch and we have the evidence that the mesenchymal cells have infiltrated the full thickness of the patch”.
“This is world class technology,” Mr Bennett says.
He says he has been talking to the two or three major players in the sector and “all are on a watching brief” for his results.
Biomd was untraded at 4.2 cents.
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