Bone Therapeutics (Belgium) is a cell therapy biotech working on bone fracture repair which has now extended its collaboration with Kasios (France), to develop next-generation bone disease therapy with 3D-Bioprinting technology.
The current standard-of-care in the Bones field involves major surgeries and (consequently) long recovery time. Bone Therapeutics is, therefore, developing a range of regenerative products containing osteoblasts (bone-forming cells), which can be injected with minimal invasiveness.
Preob, Bone Therapeutics’ autologous bone cell product, is currently in pivotal Phase IIb/III clinical studies for two indications: osteonecrosis (for which it has FDA Orphan Drug Designation), non-union fractures, and phase II trials for severe osteoporosis.
Allob on the other hand is an allogeneic “off-the-shelf” cell product made from adult bone marrow donors. It is in phase I/IIa trials for the treatment of delayed-union fractures and lumbar fusion for degenerative disease of the spine.
Inducing Spinal fusion is considered to be the gold standard for treating a broad spectrum of degenerative spine disorders, including degenerative disc disease, to relieve pain and improve function.
It consists of bridging two or more vertebrae with the use of a cage and graft material (traditionally an autologous or synthetic bone substitute) for fusing an unstable portion of the spine or immobilizing a painful segment of the spine. However, although this procedure is routine, failure of vertebrae to fuse is quite common.
Under the new collaboration, BT and Kasios aim to combine Allob cells with Kasios’ spinal fusion ‘cage’ containing a 3D-BioPrinted synthetic matrix (also known as a ‘waffle’) to simplify the surgical procedure and accelerate the fusion process.
In a previous partnership, the two biotechs successfully combined Kasios’ tech with Allob cells in preclinical studies, resulting in increased bone formation.
This certainly seems like another example of mind-blowing MedTech I should have added to my review ‘Becoming Cyborg: 10 Amazing MedTech Inventions in the Biotech Industry‘. And Kasios and BT’s Waffle combo is certainly a rival to other synthetic bone matrix biotechs, which include IBI‘s SmartBone (Switzerland).
This sounds like an exciting deal, particularly for Kasios, and this combination therapy for Bone diseases will likely go down really well with patients and surgeons alike should trials succeed.