AMNIOX is highlighting a study showing that more than 87 percent of patients with diabetic foot ulcers have achieved healing when treated with NEOX wound allograft. Essentially, it’s cryo-preserved umbilical cord and amniotic membrane tissue is being used for wound management.
In a conversation with Julie O’Connell PhD, Sr. Director of Research and Development at AMNIOX, she shared about this technology and how it is beneficial on many fronts.
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A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
What makes AMINOX’ technology unique and prevalent in wound healing?
The idea with a chronic wound is that it’s a disease of chronic inflammation. So, what’s happening is that the body is simultaneously attempting to repair, and there is tissue structure repair going on at the same time because it’s stuck in a pathological inflammatory state. Your body is attempting to repair, it’s just somewhat masked by all of the tissue destruction that’s occurring.
The mechanism of our tissue is that it’s anti-inflammatory. It’s built to protect the fetus from rejection, that’s what mother nature intended it to do. By nature, it’s anti-inflammatory. When you preserve it correctly and take it into a chronic wound environment, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It decreases inflammation and essentially resets the cycle. For lack of a better term, it takes that wound and gets it out of being ‘stuck in the mud.’
Is this tissue attached with sutures?
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Gabby Everett, the site director for BioLabs Pegasus Park, offered a tour of the space and shared some examples of why early-stage life science companies should choose North Texas.
Exactly – well it depends on the surgeon. But typically it’s attached with sutures. A surgeon will either cut it to fill the wound, or some won’t even cut it because they don’t want to throw away the biology. They will tuck it under to still fit the wound.
All of this tissue is based on donation?
Yes. All of the tissue is electively donated by mothers who are having elective cesarean section procedures. Once a woman has the procedure, they would be approached to see if they would be willing to donate their placenta. There is extensive screening. It’s the great thing about having live donors. You can tailor your screenings to someone who is alive and can answer your questions.
This is somewhat considered politically controversial, especially now, but do you get any tissue from those who opt to have an abortion?
We certainly don’t get any of our tissue in that respect. I know that some of that is used for research, completely outside of our scope, but it’s certainly not anything we use based on certain guidelines. But it’s certainly something I get asked about 50 percent of the time now, based on recent news.
What are the goals moving forward with other wound treatment markets?
It’s an interesting question because of the wound-healing tactic, the reason it works in the heart or with a wound is because that’s whatever area of the body heals. We’re impacting that at a fundamental level.
AMIOX wound-healing solutions are regulated by the FDA and are available commercially.
