Friday, September 12, 2008

CellThera generates defense interest

By Stephen DeSantis

The U.S. military, it seems, has taken a keen interest in newts, starfish and lizards. The reason? Those animals can grow back limbs — humans cannot. Over the last few years, the Department of Defense has been awarding regular grants to CellThera Inc., a small biotech housed in the Life Science and Research Center at Gateway Park at Worcester Polytechnic Institute that is focused on regenerating human tissue.

The company’s ambitious plan is to commercialize wound healing and regenerative therapies stemming from years of research on stem cells. The potential applications include everything from growing back severed limbs to eliminating scar tissue. The biotech aims to turn back the evolutionary clock on skin, muscle and nerve cells.

“Obviously the cells do have the ability to do what these animals are doing, they just forgot how,” explained Tanja Dominko, founder of CellThera.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awards have totalled $1.6 million over the past two years. CellThera finished the first phase of its project with the DOD in August and it anticipates another substantial two-year grant coming shortly. Dominko stated that once the company validates its preclinical research it will begin to seek outside funding for commercialization.

Dominko was a senior research scientist with Worcester-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc. — a biotech with a long history in embryonic stem cell therapy and cloning research — before founding CellThera in 2002. In 2006, it established an incubative-type collaboration with the school’s Bioengineering Institute (BEI). Dominko joined WPI’s faculty as an associate professor in August.

“The nice thing about CellTherea is that this is not basic, curiosity-driven stem cell research. There are a lot of labs that already do that. Their goal is to come out of this with a solid clinical outcome. DARPA and WPI have that same goal,” said Grant McGimpsey, director of WPI’s BEI.

The company’s research is traveling down two roads. CellThera has been experimenting with reverting adult skin cells into stem cells, then coaxing them along to behave in a regenerative fashion. These cells could then be transplanted back into the patient at the site of injury.

But through that research, CellThera needed to discover the right series of compounds that trick cells into recovering their evolutionary memory. Once the compounds are known, they can be administered directly into wound area, explained Dominko.

The latter approach is most likely where the technology is headed, she said.

“We can convince those cells to go back in time and essentially behave like an amphibian,” said Dominko.

Competition in the regenerative medicine space is high in the Bay State. Cambridge-based biotech Pervasis Therapeutics Inc. is working on a drug and gel matrix for vascular wound healing. In addition, I-Therapeutix Inc. and Arch Therapeutics Inc. are both developing products intended to seal over surgical wounds.