Bringing hope to millions of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) patients worldwide
Thousands of spinal cord injuries occur globally every year, primarily resulting from trauma caused by traffic accidents, falls and sports. In the U.S alone, over 17,000 new SCI cases are reported each year. SCI patients usually suffer irreversible damage with further tissue degeneration. SCI patients are 2 to 5 times more likely to suffer premature death, and bear tremendous healthcare costs ranging from $350,000 to $1 million in the first year alone.
Matricelf’s regenerative medicine platform brings new hope to SCI patients across the world – a future in which they will be able to live productive and independent life.
Engineering 100% autologous neural implants
The process begins with a small biopsy, taken from the patient’s omentum tissue by an abdominal incision. The omental biopsy undergoes a proprietary decellularization process that results in thermo-responsive hydrogel formation, while induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are re-programmed from patient’s mature cells.
Ex-vivo differentiation of iPSCs within the thermo-responsive hydrogel leads to the generation of a functional, patient-specific neural implants that are capable of bridging injured spinal tissue.