CELLUS is building a pipeline of diversified therapeutic programs with unbounded potential. CELLUS intends to expand its pipeline to include additional indications, addressing other diseases that are rooted in cell loss and the body’s inability to self-repair.
Severe Muscle Injury
The first project aims to prove that the CELLUSPHERES®, three-dimensional spheroids (3D) of expanded mesenchymal cells using CELLUS Method, induce faster and better regeneration in damaged tissues by inducing pro-survival properties in the cellular product.
The project is divided into three phases: the execution of the prototyping activities (2018-2019), preclinical validation (2019) and clinical studies of the novel product (2020-2021), which will be carried out jointly with the Universidad de Chile, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Clinical Research Organization (CRO) FGK in Germany, where the Phase I-IIa clinical study will take place in patients undergoing hip replacement surgery as a model of severe muscle injury.
The project is partially funded by 1,5M USD Chilean CORFO Grant “3D Multicellular spheroids obtained from adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) expanded by CELLUS Method”.
Parkinson’s Disease
Through our Parkinson’s program, we are developing an innovative 3D cell spheroids technology to restore the dopamine-secreting cells that have been lost in Parkinson’s patients. Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease that affects more than 10 million patients worldwide comprising a combined direct and indirect cost estimated at $25 billion per year in the United States alone. Currently, Parkinson is an incurable disease with current therapies aiming only at treating symptoms or slowing disease progression.
The project aims to evaluate the capacity of CELLUSPHERES® to induce neuroprotection and/or neuroregeneration in animal preclinical models of Parkinson’s Disease (2016). The grant has an extension of two years and is currently being developed by the Cellular Stress and Biomedicine Laboratory, Biomedical Neuroscience Institute (BNI), Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Chile, led by Dr. Claudio Hetz. The world-class institute has a vast experience in basic and applied neurosciences and the evaluation of innovative therapies in models of neurodegenerative diseases.
The project is partially funded by 500k USD Chilean CORFO Grant “Pre-clinical development of an innovative treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) with adult pluripotent stem cells Muse -AT”.
