Cellular Biomedicine Group to Release 48-week Data from Phase I Clinical Trial for Promising Stem Cell Therapy AlloJoin for Knee Osteoarthritis

 The data will be presented at the B. Riley FBR Inaugural China Healthcare Investing & Partnering Symposium (CHIPS), to be held March 15-17, 2018 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Hangzhou, China. Company management will also participate in a panel discussion at the conference.

The clinical stage biotech company has made a number of headlines in recent months that have raised interest and stock price. In December of 2017 and February 2018 the company closed two private placements for a total of $45.1 million.

The company recently partnered with GE Healthcare to improve CAR T manufacturing capabilities at its facility in Shanghai. CBMG also partnered with Thermo Fisher Scientific to develop an automated cell therapy manufacturing system.

In February 2017, the company received a $2.29 million grant from The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), California’s stem cell agency to aid in the development of Allojoin. Dr. C. Thomas Vangsness, Jr., in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Dr. Qing Liu-Michael at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, helped CBMG with the grant application process.

In addition to AlloJoin, the company also has ReJoin in Phase IIb trials for knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Rejoin uses the patient's own adipose to culture stem cells. CBMG release positive 48 week data from its Rejoin Phase IIB trial in January of 2016. The results included significant improvement of symptoms and cartilage volume compared with controls and no reports of serious adverse events reported in any of the clinical trials to date.  

AlloJoin is an allogeneic* stem cell therapy product. The advantage of such a product is that it can provide for a bank of third party donor cells that can be used as an off-the-shelf treatment that is available at a lower cost than some other therapies.

One recent study found that that KOA affects 19% of Americans aged 45 or older. This is up from 13% in 1960.

In addition to its stem cell products, CBMG is developing nine CAR-T based products and one vaccine for use in the oncology arena.

*allogeneic stem cells are those that come from donors rather than from the patient.