Ossium Health, a bioengineering company developing the world’s first bank of organ donor bone marrow, and the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match®, a global leader working to save lives through cellular therapy, today announced their partnership to expand access to vital bone marrow and accelerate the industry’s ability to make bone marrow transplants accessible at scale.
Ossium and NMDP/Be The Match are kicking off a clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of Ossium’s bone marrow product. PRESERVE I “A First-in-Human Study of HLA-Partially to Fully Matched Allogeneic Cryopreserved Deceased Donor Bone Marrow Transplantation for Patients with Hematologic Malignancies” (NCT05589896) is anticipated to open in Q4 2023. Once the trial is completed, a subsequent multi-center, phase II clinical trial will open. With favorable trial results, the two organizations will then work to integrate the bone marrow donations in Ossium Health’s proprietary bank into NMDP/Be The Match’s national donor registry. Once on the national registry, Ossium Health’s donated bone marrow will become a resource for doctors from nearly 160 U.S. transplant centers who utilize the Be The Match Registry® to offer patients additional options when searching for matches. This partnership will dramatically increase Ossium’s ability to serve patients at scale, and allow NMDP/Be The Match to offer a new source of life-saving bone marrow to a wider group of patients in need.
“With 18,000 patients in need of a bone marrow transplant each year, we need to ensure that people have access to the broadest set of donors possible to make life-saving matches a reality for all,” said Kevin Caldwell, CEO & Co-Founder at Ossium Health. “We’re thrilled to work with NMDP/Be The Match to supplement their registry with viable donors that enable more people to receive on-demand treatment.”
Ossium isolates bone marrow from authorized deceased donors, which is phenotypically and functionally equivalent to cells from living donors, and then cryopreserves and stores the marrow until it is requested by a physician. Ossium’s approach can drastically reduce the wait period for bone marrow transplants. Once the clinical trials and registry integration are complete, Ossium will provide off-the-shelf bone marrow solutions, complementing NMDP/Be The Match’s existing U.S. registry of more than 9 million potential living donors.
“At Be The Match, we’re devoted to maximizing the opportunity for patients to find the best possible match, so Ossium is a great partner for us,” said Amy Ronneberg, CEO of NMDP/Be The Match. “We’re energized by their industry-shifting donation source that could open the door for so many more people to receive the bone marrow transplants they need, and look forward to all that we can accomplish together to improve the lives of people battling blood cancer and blood disorders.”
Visit AITechPark for cutting-edge Tech Trends around AI, ML, Cybersecurity, along with AITech News, and timely updates from industry professionals!
