Therapeutic Areas
We are developing products and researching novel therapies that have potential applications across the healthcare spectrum, including hemostasis, imaging of internal bleeding, and regenerative medicine.
Platelet-based hemostatics can play a key role in treating bleeding in hospitalized patients and in prehospital situations to help prevent hemorrhage-associated death. Cellphire is developing products that can be routinely available at all levels of care and to all providers once approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Antiplatelet Drug Antidote - Treatment with anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents is common for patients with cardiac and vascular diseases. There has been a significant increase in the use of these agents for primary prevention of stroke and heart disease. Patients taking these drugs are at a greater risk of bleeding from accidents or if they need emergency surgery. We are developing next generation platelet-derived products to stop bleeding in the presence of anticoagulants and anti-platelet drugs. Preliminary data supports reversal of platelet COX-1 antagonists (aspirin, NSAIDS), P2Y12 antagonists (clopidogrel) and GPIIb/IIIIa antagonists(abciximab); warfarin and heparin general anticoagulants; and direct thrombin and factor Xa inhibitors.
Trauma - Trauma deaths from hemorrhage could be reduced by 36 percent, or over 50,000 saved lives, in the United States per year with balanced early transfusion of blood products, including platelets (Drake, 2020).
Thrombocytopenia - Thrombocytopenic patients who have low platelet counts sometimes bleed despite receiving routine platelet transfusions to increase their platelet count. These patients need a safe, reliable, and easy to use platelet-based hemostatic that will quickly stop breakthrough bleeds.
Regenerative Medicine
Cellphire is developing regenerative medicine therapeutics that have a range of potential applications. Our initial focus is treatment of osteoarthritis (OA), a disease affecting over 300 million people worldwide (Cross, 2020). The current standard of care, corticosteroids, may be associated with an increased risk of progression of the disease toward joint replacement (Zeng, 2019).
US Annual Joint Replacements: 720,000 knee + 330,000 hip = ~ $20B/year
Autologous platelet rich plasma (PRP) has shown efficacy in reducing pain and slowing the progression of OA (Boffa, 2021), but the high variability of autologous (single donor) PRP and inconsistency of composition have impeded adoption of the treatment (Magalon, 2021).
Our product has the potential to provide an easy to use off-the-shelf PRP equivalent, but with consistent quality and composition, thereby providing clear clinical data that doctors can trust.
High Resolution Imaging
Cellphire has harnessed platelets’ aggregation function in order to concentrate contrast agents at the site of internal bleeds, which are often difficult to pinpoint. We can load human platelets with contrast agents that aggregate at the bleeding site to render high resolution images. This can improve diagnostics and reduce the need for unnecessary invasive surgery to stop internal bleeding.