BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

ExCellThera’s safer allogeneic transplants

How ExCellThera is increasing the safety of allogeneic stem cell transplants

December 14, 2018 11:40 PM UTC

ExCellThera Inc. is expanding cord blood into allogeneic stem cell transplants for cancer that have lower treatment-related mortality rates and GvHD incidence than competing technologies.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCTs) of unexpanded cord blood have two key drawbacks, according to CFO and Chief Legal Officer David Millette. First, only about 5% of cord blood samples contain enough stem cells to treat an adult, restricting their use. Second, despite having a lower rate of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) than standard of care (SOC) bone marrow or peripheral blood transplants, unexpanded cord blood transplants have a treatment-related mortality (TRM) rate of about 30%, roughly twice that of SOC...