Maxim Group
Pluristem Therapeutics announced plans to collaborate with the New York Blood Center on preclinical studies of its Placental eXpanded (PLX)-R18 cells to enhance the efficacy of umbilical cord blood (UCB) transplantation.
The project has been selected to receive a conditional award of $900,000 from Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD). Per the terms of the project, Pluristem (ticker: PSTI) will provide the PLX-R18 cells and the New York Blood Center (NYBC) will be responsible for conducting and supporting the studies. We are excited to see this important research and we note similar research announced fromMesoblast(MESO) earlier this month.
Mesoblast announced that MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Texas and the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) will fund a clinical trial combining Mesoblast’s two synergistic proprietary technologies, Mesenchymal Precursor Cell (MPC)-based expansion and ex-vivo fucosylation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for UCB transplantation in cancer patients.
We believe mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) will promote engraftment in cord blood transplants and likely in BMTs. We also believe that since Mesoblast is combining fucisylation technology with MSCs, that they are likely to see superior results. The work being done at MDACC by Dr. Elizabeth J. Shpall (who has been working with this technology for many years) is on the leading edge of science.
Umbilical cord blood cells represent a rich supply of stem cells. These are used (transplanted) to restore a patient’s bone marrow cells; stem cell transplant to treat leukemia, lymphoma, immune deficiency, genetic diseases and other cancers. Prior preclinical research has suggested that MSCs can help cord blood stem cells to engraft more rapidly and effectively than if they are administered alone. The ability to affect speed and extent of engraftment is clinically important, because a patient remains vulnerable to severe infection and other serious complications until transplanted stem cells begin to make mature blood cells.
Mesoblast Effort: The trial will provide clinical data on whether the combination of MSCs and Fucosylation to explore the synergistic effects to facilitate a more rapid cord blood HSC engraftment for bone-marrow transplant patients than can be achieved by either [MSCs or Fucosylation] alone.
Pluristem’s Effort: PLX-R18 is a multifactorial treatment for hematologic conditions. The hope is that it can speed engraftment of umbilical cord blood cells and stimulate the production of all three types of blood cells: white and red blood cells, as well as platelets.
Recall that the Pluristem and Mesoblast approaches differ. Pluristem uses expanded heterogeneous population of cells that originate from the placenta versus Mesoblast which uses a selected, bone-marrow-derived MSC, expanded. In addition Mesoblast is also utilizing a second unrelated technology, fucosylation. We have previously reviewed this technology with Dr. Shpall and believe that it is viable (works). As such, we believe the combination of MSCs and fucosylation should produce a superior result.
We also note that hardware companyCesca Therapeutics(KOOL) has developed a product (MXP Smart Device) for improving the yield and quality among clinical mismatch and haploid-identical transplants. The combination of these products together holds great promise for patients.
