Kevin Caldwell, CEO, Co-Founder & President of Ossium Health, recently sat down for an interview with Nasdaq’s Kristina Ayanian at their New York headquarters. In the interview, Kevin explained how Ossium is leveraging its organ donor-derived bone marrow platform to improve the accessibility and quality of leukemia treatments today and develop innovative therapies for organ rejection and orthopedic applications tomorrow.
Ossium Health, an innovative bioengineering company, is accelerating its mission to revolutionize the field of bone marrow transplantation through a new partnership with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match, which manages the most diverse registry of blood stem cell donors and cord blood units in the world. This collaboration will enable blood cancer patients to access transplantable units of bone marrow from deceased donors through clinical trials, providing a much-needed complement to today’s living donor model.
Ossium Health, Inc. a bioengineering company developing the world’s first bank of on-demand bone marrow, today announced a $52 million Series C funding round. The round was led by CPMG, with participation from Vivo Capital, First Round Capital, Manta Ray Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Asahi Kasei. The company is improving the health, vitality, and longevity of human beings through bioengineering and will deploy this funding to dramatically grow its proprietary bone marrow bank, build on existing clinical trials, and accelerate new product development.
This round of funding will also support the launch of OssiGraft™, an orthopedic product for the repair, replacement, and reconstruction of musculoskeletal defects. This product is derived from the same vertebral bodies as Ossium’s other products, and provides another opportunity to honor the precious gift of donated tissue.
Ossium Health, Inc. announced today that the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded the company a $3.46M Clinical Stage Research Program (CLIN1) grant to support the continued clinical development of OSSM-007, Ossium’s interferon-gamma primed mesenchymal stem cell product, for the treatment of steroid-refractory acute graft versus host disease (GVHD).
This funding will support and accelerate pre-clinical and manufacturing activities for OSSM-007, with plans to initiate clinical study activities by the end of 2023.lls from deceased donors from Ossium Health’s first-in-the-world bone marrow bank in conjunction with ExCellThera’s ECT-001 cell expansion and rejuvenation technology, comprised of the UM171 small molecule and an optimized culture system, to treat blood cancers, improve solid organ tolerization and repair damage from radiation.
Kevin Caldwell, Ossium’s CEO & Co-Founder, was featured on the latest episode of Translating Aging, a podcast produced by BioAge Labs featuring entrepreneurs and scientists who are advancing the science of human longevity and developing therapeutics to extend the human healthspan.
In this episode, Kevin speaks with host Chris Patil, PhD, about Ossium’s groundbreaking approach to processing and banking bone marrow from organ donors for use in a broad range of clinical applications, including transplants for blood cancer patients and emerging stem cell therapies.
We invite you to listen-in today to not only learn about how Ossium is increasing the availability of bone marrow transplant treatment options for blood cancer patients, but to also gain valuable insights into the future of healthcare itself.
You can listen to Kevin and Chris chat on your favorite podcast platform below:
Kevin Caldwell, Ossium’s Co-Founder & CEO, gave a presentation about Ossium and the Promise of Bone Marrow Banking at Meeting on the Mesa, one of the year’s biggest biotech conferences that brings together senior executives and top decision-makers in the Cell & Gene therapy industry to share their companies’ clinical and commercial progress in the field.
Meeting on the Mesa is the flagship conference of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), the leading international advocacy organization dedicated to realizing the promise of regenerative medicines and advanced therapies. As the global voice of the sector, ARM represents the interests of 450+ members across 25 countries, including small and large companies, academic research institutions, major medical centers and patient groups. Ossium is proud to be a new member of ARM, and we look forward to many more successful Meetings on the Mesa in the years to come.
We invite you to watch the video of Kevin’s presentation here!
The San Francisco (top) and Indianapolis (bottom) Ossium teams wearing their Blue and Green for Donate Life Month
This April, Ossium Health continues to be a proud supporter of National Donate Life Month. Founded in 2003 by Donate Life America and its partnering organizations, National Donate Life Month is an opportunity to celebrate those who have received transplants, to recognize those who continue to wait, to honor donors and donor families, and to thank registered donors for giving hope. It is also an opportunity to show appreciation for the many professionals – including researchers, advocates, volunteers, and healthcare providers – who serve the donation and transplant communities and make everything possible.
At Ossium, we’d like to give a special thanks to all of our partners and donation advocates at Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) around the country. OPOs are not-for-profit organizations responsible for recovering organs and tissues from deceased donors for transplantation, and they serve as the vital link between donors and patients waiting for life-saving organ transplants. Ossium’s partnerships with OPOs are the foundation of our ability to develop cellular therapies for patients in need, and are a core component to our mission to improve the health, vitality, and longevity of human beings through bioengineering.
We’d also like to give a shout out to the Donor Team here at Ossium, which ensures that the most critical part of our work, acquiring donated tissue from donors, occurs smoothly. Members of the Donor Team share a common passion for organ and tissue donation, and fully understand just how precious the gift of life can be. In honor of National Donate Life Month, we’ve asked two members of our donor team to share what donation means to them; below are quotes from Karina Chavarria, our Senior Donor Manager, and Matt Ryll, our Senior Manager of Donor Field Services.
“Donation to me means our lives never end. Signing up to be a donor, or making that difficult decision as a family member at an unexpected time, is one of the most selfless acts you can ever make. There is a legacy in donation – one of hope, caring and support that enables at least one more person to continue this beautiful journey we call life. And it doesn’t just end with that one person – there is a ripple through space and time for friends and family of that recipient. There really is no end to the gift of life.”
– Karina Chavarria Senior Donor Manager
“Donation has touched my life in many ways, most importantly as a Donor Family. I know how impactful it can be to know that your loved one will continue to live on in others.It’s my hope that knowing a family’s loved one has the ability to save more lives, not just now but in the future, helps them through some of the toughest moments they will have to face.”
– Matt Ryll Senior Manager, Donor Field Services
Though Donate Life Month is certainly a time for gratitude and celebration, it is also a time to remember there is still a long road ahead. At this moment, there are more than 100,000 people across the country who are waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. Thousands more are waiting for life-enhancing cornea and tissue transplants. This long waiting list and critical shortage of available organs and tissues leads to 17 people dying every day while awaiting transplant. However, there continues to be hope and progress, with 2021 being a record year in the donation and transplant world. Last year, more than 41,000 transplants were performed using organs from 20,300 donors, an increase of over 5% compared to 2020 and the first time ever the number of transplants exceeded 40,000.
While transplantation continues to increase substantially and meet the needs of many people with organ failure, we must join together and continue our efforts to shorten the waiting list and encourage our friends and family to become organ donors. If you or a loved one have not signed up as an organ donor, you can visit DonateLife.net or OrganDonor.gov to learn more and register to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor. Every individual who becomes a donor has the opportunity to save up to 8 lives via organ donation and heal the lives of more than 75 people through tissue and cornea donation.
From all of us at Ossium Health, we wish you a Happy National Donate Life Month, and we look forward to the day where every patient in need has access to life-saving organ and tissue transplants.
Here at Ossium, we publish monthly internal newsletters highlighting company updates and accomplishments. Each newsletter also includes a brief note from our CEO, Kevin Caldwell. In February’s edition, Kevin reflected on all of the progress we made in 2021, despite facing a host of challenges as a company and society. Check out Kevin’s letter below.
When I was younger, my parents used to tell me that every challenge was an opportunity in disguise. Back then, I thought of those words as an empty platitude, something people said to make themselves feel better about hardship. But, over the years, and especially throughout the pandemic, I have come to understand that my parents were telling the truth: that we only discover our true potential when pushed out of our comfort zones and asked to do seemingly impossible things. They taught me that greatness is forged through hard work and adversity.
The pandemic has also taught us that we must follow our core company value of ‘Truth’ through science. To roughly quote Andy Weir’s The Martian, “in the face of overwhelming odds, [we’re] left with only one option: [we’re] going to have to science the shit out of this.” Over the last two years, researchers and members of the pharma & biotech industries took this phrase to heart, and the progress we’ve made on vaccines and other therapeutics is remarkable. The world has never made and distributed a vaccine for a disease faster than it did for COVID-19. The fact that we had one—let alone multiple—vaccines during the first year of the pandemic is extraordinary.
Here at Ossium, we too have looked towards science and truth to drive progress. In the face of adversity, the team prevailed, and though I will look back at 2021 as being dominated by a global pandemic, I will also look at this year as the time we treated our first patient, got 4 INDs that used Ossium products cleared by the FDA, and grew our team by more than 100%.
2021, much like 2020, has been a year characterized by adversity, challenge, and loss. It was a hard year for many people, including myself, but amidst the chaos and stress of the ongoing pandemic, we have made incredible strides forward both globally and here at Ossium. Though 2022 will bring its own challenges, I am hopeful and optimistic that the world can get better. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that health is the bedrock of civilization. People will prioritize staying alive and well to the necessary detriment of everything else. Simply put, the pandemic has reinforced a phrase that here at Ossium we are quite familiar with: The Greatest Wealth is Health.
The hard work and dedication shown by each and every member of the Ossium team has given me great confidence about our ability to play a crucial role in building a world where everyone has the chance to live a healthy, happy, and productive life, free from the burden of disease.
Recent Comments