Minimizing the Cost and Time Requirements for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapy (HSCT)

SLU ID 16-021 | VLA-4 Antagonists as Mobilization Agents for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant

Background

Healthy blood cells are destroyed along with cancer cells during high-dose chemotherapy. Hematopoietic stem cell therapy (HSCT) repopulates the patient’s stem cells that in turn regenerate mature healthy blood cells. Current HSCT is a lengthy and expensive process requiring 5-8 days to stimulate and collect the patient’s own stem cells, including 3-4 hour collection sessions for up to four days until sufficient stem cells have been collected.

Overview

Researchers at Saint Louis University have developed a method to accelerate the mobilization of hematopoietic stem cells. This includes the discovery of VLA4 antagonist compounds that have superior in vivo efficacy.

Benefits

The potential benefits of this technology include:

• Minimizing the time required to collect stem cells

• Minimizing the time of hematopoietic stem cell therapy

• Minimizing the cost of hematopoietic stem cell therapy

Applications

The potential applications of this technology include:

• hematopoietic stem cell therapy

Opportunity

Saint Louis University is seeking a partner to further develop and commercialize this technology.