MedCity News on WKYC-TV: The future of Cleveland biopharma’s ‘poster child’

Mary Vanac, MedCity News’ vice president and Ohio bureau chief, joined syndication partner WKYC-TV Tuesday evening discussing the future of Athersys, a Cleveland stem cell company that continues to search for partners as it develops its adult stem cell therapy, MultiStem.

“Right now, like every company, it’s having trouble raising the money it needs to continue to commercialize its products,” Vanac said.

Athersys said last month that it continued enrollments in safety and efficacy trials for MultiStem, which would be used for heart attack patients and those who run the risk of rejecting bone marrow transplants. At the same time, the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company looked for money for a third trial involving stroke patients and continued to develop drugs to treat obesity and cognitive problems.

“We believe MultiStem represents the first stem cell therapy that can be manufactured on a large scale, administered without tissue matching or immune suppression, is capable of delivering a therapeutic benefit in multiple ways,” Gil Van Bokkelen, chairman and chief executive of Athersys, said during a November conference call with securities analysts.