UK regen-med showcases translational achievements

One of the standout presentations for us was a keynote talk by David Haddow, Operations Director at Sheffield-based Altrika.  A material sciences company, Altrika is utilising novel acrylic acid polymers to culture autologous and allogeneic skin cells in such a way as they can be delivered to the wound bed in a biologically active state with greater efficiency and less waste product as compared with existing tissue engineering approaches.  Altrika’s approach to wound care management highlighted the potential to significantly reduce the number of clinical visits for patients with burns and diabetic ulcers, resulting in overall reduction in cost of treatment.

One observation from the day’s talks: the reliance upon non-dilutive, central funding sources rather than venture backed funding to progress UK-based RM product development programmes.  The financing of the RM sector was picked up by Cathy Prescott at Biolatris, who highlighted the need to align risks, drivers and incentives for each of the major stakeholder groups and presented a novel approach to funding RM therapies, based on significant loss of economic productivity caused by the typically chronic conditions which RM aims to treat, rather than healthcare costs alone.

David Williams highlighted downstream requirements such as manufacturing, transportation and physical delivery of the final therapy should be considered early in the process to ensure product development success.

It was a good day in terms of the quality of talk and networking.  However, it would have been good to see better representation from the pharmaceutical industry, where we know there is growing R&D interest in regenerative medicine interventions.