March 9, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Belgium-based Cardio3 BioSciences announced today that it will open its first U.S. facility in Rochester, Minn. The Minnesota Job Creation Fund will invest $375,000 to aid in the expansion.
“[Cardio3] is a welcome addition to Minnesota’s world-leading destination for life sciences,” said Katie Clark Sieben, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development in a statement.
Rochester is also the home of The Mayo Clinic, which has around a 3 percent stake in Cardio3, as well as a licensing agreement with the company. The basis of the agreement is C-Cure Therapy, a technique that takes cells harvested from bone marrow called cardiopoietic stem cells, which are then genetically reprogrammed. They are then transplanted into heart tissue, causing it to generate new tissue.
The inventors of the technique are Andre Terzic, director of Regenerative Medicine at Mayo, and Atta Behfar, director of Cardiovascular Regeneration. Details of the financial arrangements between Cardio3 and The Mayo Clinic are currently unknown.
Cardio3 specializes in cell therapies. The company announced on March 2, 2015 that it had received a Paediatric Investigation Plan (PIP) waiver from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for C-Cure. The product candidate is currently in Phase III clinical development for the treatment of ischemic heart failure.
“The PIP waiver represents the first important milestone in the regulatory process in Europe and signifies the completion of one of the mandatory stages that must be completed before Cardio3BioSciences is able to submit a marketing authorization for C-Cure to the EMA,” said company chief executive officer Christian Homsy in a statement. “Our company is now well positioned to continue the process toward market authorization by focusing on the completion of our Phase III clinical trial in adult patients. C-Cure’s progression toward regulatory approval continues steadily and we look forward to fulfilling additional regulatory requirements to achieve EMA market authorization for our main cardiac product-candidate.”
The new Rochester facility is expected to create 33 jobs. In addition to a relationship with The Mayo Clinic, Cardio3 BioSciences also has a research collaboration with Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
In addition to its work in cardiovascular regeneration, the company has a lead oncology candidate, CM-CS1, a CAR T-cell product candidate that uses NKG2D, a Natural Killer (NK) cell receptor to target markers present on most tumor types, including hematologic cancers and solid tumors. The company also is working on developing medical devices that assist in the delivery of biotherapeutics agents into the myocardium and for cardiac surgery.
“It’s gratifying to see the hard work put into our annual BIO International trade show attendance pay off,” said Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede in a statement. “Cardio3 will be a great addition to our business community.”
BioSpace Temperature Poll
Vertex Pharmaceuticals made news last week when it terminated leases on three properties in Cambridge, Mass, that freed up 313,000 square feet of space in the Genetown area. The company has spent a significant part of 2014 consolidating its operations on the South Boston waterfront, leasing 291,000 square feet of office space at West Kendall Street in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. So we wanted to ask the BioSpace community: Is Boston going to be getting more biotech leases anytime soon, or fewer tenants?
