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Anti-SDF-1 Treatment Prevents Retinal Neovascularization

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 February 2006, 09:00 CST

RegenMed (www.regenmedbio.com), a development-stage biotechnology company, today announced that the company's anti-SDF-1 treatment prevents retinal neovascularization, a condition that causes blood vessels in the retina to leak fluid or blood and grow branches and scar tissue. This can lead to blurred, distorted vision in primates.

The findings from the non-human primate SDF-1 antibody studies were presented by RegenMed researcher Dr. Edward Scott at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute sponsored Angiogenesis meeting for clinical developments in the area of eye disease.

RegenMed is advancing regenerative medicine by developing a broad adult stem cell platform for the prevention and treatment of human disease.

"Our treatment is the first that we know of targeting SDF-1, which may be a better target than the target of other potential treatments coming to market - or may work well with the other treatments as a combination therapy," said Scott. "In the session I presented ours was the only talk on SDF-1 and its role in angiogenesis. Every other talk focused on some aspect of VEGF (another growth factor) in angiogenesis." Scott says the study results may lead to a preventative treatment for diabetic retinopathy and possibly anti-angiogenic therapies for other diseases like cancer.

SDF-1 is a cytokine, a small protein that enables cells to "talk" to one another. Many tissues in the body can turn on the expression of SDF-1 in response to an injury, essentially issuing a call for help. SDF-1 recruits many blood cell types to areas of the body where it is expressed. Repair cells essentially follow the protein like breadcrumbs to find the injury that needs repair.

In RegenMed's animal model of proliferative retinopathy (growing vessels into the eye), SDF-1 is expressed in response to injury, and cells are called in to repair the damaged blood vessels. The repair process itself is what causes vision problems as the formation of new blood vessels disrupts the architecture of the retina. RegenMed injected an antibody that blocks SDF-1 activity before causing the vessels to grow. The antibody prevented the bad blood vessels from growing, suggesting this would make a good preventative therapy.

With the completion of this primate study (which follows studies in mice) RegenMed is now preparing the antibody for use in humans, and will then seek FDA approval to begin human clinical trials.

The results from the mouse study were initially published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2005. The primate results replicated the findings in the original mouse model with respect to blocking angiogenesis. A full hematology and pathology examination showed no adverse effects of the anti-SDF-1 antibody therapy on the animals. The efficacy and safety of the anti-SDF-1 antibody therapy in RegenMed's acute model of proliferative retinopathy provides hope that the treatment can be successfully adapted to the treatment of the chronic disease of diabetic retinopathy.

About RegenMed

Based in Gainesville, Florida, RegenMed (www.regenmedbio.com) is a development-stage biotechnology company. RegenMed is advancing regenerative medicine by developing a broad adult stem cell platform for the prevention and treatment of human disease.

RegenMed's research is focused on new therapies for neural degeneration (Parkinson's disease), angiogenesis (diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration), and cancer (glioblastoma and osteosarcoma).

RegenMed, Inc was founded in Gainesville, Florida in 2002, with the goal of bringing together a world-renown working group of stem cell biologists with complementary skills to develop new regenerative medicine therapeutics. The Company is built on the groundbreaking research of its founders and other key scientists, initially at the University of Tennessee in Memphis and now at the University of Florida. The University of Florida continues to be very supportive of the commercialization of RegenMed's extensive intellectual property portfolio.

Source: Business Wire

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