Medistem Inc. (PINKSHEETS: MEDS) reported today a recent publication in the peer reviewed journal International Archives of Medicine describing a 74 year old heart failure patient treated with the company's endometrial regenerative cell (ERC) product in November 2007. The patient's ejection fraction, meaning the heart's pumping activity, increased from 25-30% pre-treatment to 40% in June of 2008. The increase was maintained when the patient was re-examined in August 2008 and October 2009. Substantial quality of life improvement was noted as assessed by the Minnesota Quality of Life Questionnaire Score which dropped from 97 pre-treatment to 2 in February 2009. No treatment associated adverse events were noted in the follow-up.

"We have previously published that the ERC stem cells can differentiate into heart, liver, lung, brain, bone, fat, muscle, blood vessel, and cartilage tissue (Meng et al. J Transl Med. 2007 Nov 15;5:57). While heart failure is not our primary indication, we are enthusiastic that our collaborators have published this data, which may be the stepping stone for future investigations," said Thomas Ichim, CEO of Medistem.

The current publication is the third description in the peer-reviewed literature of ERC being clinically used. The first paper (Zhong et al. J Transl Med. 2009 Feb 20;7:15) reported safety parameters of ERC administration intravenously and intrathecally, and the second paper (Ichim et al. Cell Immunol. 2010;260(2):75-82) described improvements in a patient with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy after ERC treatment.

"The advantage of ERC over existing stem cell approaches include: ease of administration, lack of need for donor-recipient matching, and ability to generate large quantities of ERC in an economical manner," said Thomas Ichim. "An SBIR grant is currently funding preclinical experiments requested by the FDA in response to our filed IND. We are excited about the prospects of clinical trials in the United States."

Source
Medistem Inc.