Terumo to Acquire Harvest Technologies for Stem Cell Treatments of PAD

May 11, 2011—Terumo Americas Holding, Inc. (Somerset, NJ), a subsidiary of Terumo Corporation (Tokyo, Japan), announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of Harvest Technologies Corporation (Plymouth, MA), a biotechnology company that is working to commercialize point-of-care technology that allows physicians to quickly derive highly concentrated autologous adult stem cells from their patients.

Terumo stated that the acquisition provides the company access to Harvest's two medical device therapies that show promising benefits in optimizing the body's natural healing process. The SmartPrep 2 APC+ (autologous platelet concentrate enriched with growth factors) system allows physicians to rapidly prepare highly concentrated autologous platelet-rich plasma that is enriched with growth factors to naturally stimulate the body's healing process for bone and soft tissue wounds. The SmartPrep 2 BMAC (bone marrow aspirate concentrate) technology platform is a point-of-care device that requires only 15 minutes to process and concentrate adult stem cells from a small aspirate of autologous bone marrow.

Terumo stated that both applications have shown promising results in treating cardiovascular and peripheral artery disease. Terumo Cardiovascular Systems Corporation (Ann Arbor, MI) has been a United States distributor of Harvest's platelet-rich plasma technology.

According to Terumo, Harvest's SmartPrep 2 BMAC is considered to be a potential breakthrough technology because it can process and concentrate the cellular components from autologous bone marrow, including adult stem cells, within 15 minutes, whereas some concentration techniques require hours or days in some cases to prepare. The concentrate produced by this system has been documented to generate more total nucleated cells with enhanced viability that effect a desired outcome in animal models compared to concentrations obtained by using the most common laboratory methods described in successful clinical studies while being significantly easier to implement and requiring half the amount of aspirate of bone marrow from the patient.

Harvest Technologies is focusing its initial commercialization efforts in Europe to support clinical research for the treatment of end-stage critical limb ischemia. Harvest is also conducting a 42-patient pilot, randomized, controlled, safety cardiac study of its BMAC system at three medical centers in the United States. The BMAC product is injected into the patient's heart muscle during bypass surgery to study its safety and effectiveness in this patient population. Previous studies using similar techniques have shown clinical promise, stated Terumo.