Award Winning Mayo Clinic Scientist Joins Cardio3 BioSciences
MONT-SAINT-GUIBERT, Belgium, July 14, 2010 /PRNewswire/ --
- Dr. Atta Behfar Recognised With Prestigious Award for Science Behind Cardio3 BioSciences' C-Cure Technology
Cardio3 BioSciences, a leading Belgian biotechnology company specialising in regenerative therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, today announces that Dr. Atta Behfar is joining its research and development laboratories as Director for Advanced Research. Dr. Atta Behfar, one of the key scientists involved in the development of C-Cure(R), will spend a year at Cardio3 BioSciences on assignment from Mayo Clinic to develop and strengthen the research pipeline.
Dr. Behfar is a member of the clinician investigator program in cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA and has played a key role in the research underlying Cardio3 BioSciences' lead product, C-Cure, a revolutionary stem cell treatment for heart failure. His work was recognised by the Herman K. Gold Young Investigator Award at the Annual American College of Cardiology meeting in March 2010, in Georgia, Atlanta highlighting the quality of the science behind Cardio3 BioSciences' approach.
C-Cure is designed to reprogram the patient's own stem cells into new heart cells to rebuild the heart. Dr Behfar has played an active part in developing the technology that directs the patient's cells to become cardiopoietic cells - cells 'programmed' to become new heart muscle cells when injected back into the heart of a patient, replacing those cells lost during heart failure and restoring heart function.
Cardio3 BioSciences has recently announced positive three-month safety data and preliminary efficacy results from its Phase II stage clinical trial of C-Cure in heart failure. C-Cure demonstrated a very good safety profile and positive trends in physiological and clinical measures that suggest that C-Cure, as anticipated from animal model data, is acting on heart muscle in a way that could yield important clinical benefits
Dr. Behfar will work with Cardio3 BioSciences' scientific in-house team as of July 1st, 2010, where he will have the opportunity to work directly with the Company as it continues to further develop its unique technology.
Dr. Atta Behfar said: "It is a very exciting time for Cardio3 BioSciences with C-Cure having shown encouraging early results in a clinical setting. I look forward to working with the in-house team as they further advance the product from being a scientific concept towards becoming a therapy that could potentially treat one of the world's greatest unmet medical needs. Many additional treatments may also be leveraged out of the science that lead to C-Cure discovery, and my role will be to fully develop the potential of Cardio3 BioSciences' unique technology."
Dr. Christian Homsy, CEO of Cardio3 BioSciences, added: "We are delighted that Dr Behfar has chosen to come to work with Cardio3 BioSciences and believe this demonstrates not only the quality of the work carried out at Cardio3 BioSciences but also the standard of research in Belgium more generally."
About Cardio3 BioSciences
Cardio3 BioSciences is a leading Belgian biotechnology company specialising in regenerative therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. The Company's lead product, C-Cure(R), is a highly innovative approach to the treatment of heart failure, one of the world's most pressing unmet medical needs. Based on a strategy developed by Cardio3 BioSciences' founders and leveraging technology licensed from Mayo Clinic, C-Cure is designed to reprogram the patient's own stem cells into new heart cells to rebuild the heart.
The Cardio3 BioSciences team has extensive experience in developing and commercialising new pharmaceutical products and medical technologies and the Company's strategy is to drive the clinical development of C-Cure and to market the product itself in major territories.
Cardio3 BioSciences was founded in July 2007 and is based in Mont-Saint-Guibert in the Walloon region of Belgium.
About C-Cure and Heart Failure
Heart failure is a serious and common condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood through the body, leaving the patient debilitated and unable to conduct a normal life. It can result from heart attacks or a number of other causes. Patients suffering from the condition can experience shortness of breath and extreme exhaustion. It affects 28 million patients worldwide and this number is predicted to double by 2020. Therapies available for chronic heart failure aim at slowing down the disease progression, but with the exception of heart transplant, existing drugs or devices do not cure chronic heart failure.
C-Cure is produced by taking a patient's own stem cells and, through a proprietary process, differentiating them into cardiopoietic cells that can regenerate damaged heart muscle. The cardiopoietic cells are injected into the heart of a patient with heart failure where they are designed to behave identically to those cells lost in heart failure without carrying the risk of rejection, something that has not been achieved with previous cell therapies for this indication. C-Cure is the outcome of multiple years of research conducted at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota, USA) and at the Cardiovascular Center in Aalst (Aalst, Belgium).
Disclosures
Mayo Clinic holds equity in Cardio3 BioSciences as a result of intellectual property licensed to the company.
For more information contact:
Cardio3 BioSciences
Dr Christian Homsy, CEO Tel: +32-10-39-41-00
Anne Portzenheim, Communication Manager Tel : +32-10-39-41-00
[email protected]
http://www.c3bs.com
Citigate Dewe Rogerson Tel : +44(0)207-638-9571
Chris Gardner/Nina Enegren [email protected]
Hill & Knowlton Tel : +32-2-737-95-00
Katia Delvaille [email protected]
SOURCE Cardio3 BioSciences
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