Pluristem Therapeutics, Inc., an Israeli based company developing placenta-based cell therapies, and New York University (NYU) Medical Center today announced the formation of a partnership to study the use of Pluristem’s proprietary placenta-derived PLX cells for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers.
Weiliam Chen, R.Ph. Ph.D., Director of the Tissue Engineering Research Laboratory, Department of Surgery at NYU’s Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Wound Healing Center, will be the principal investigator (PI) of these pre-clinical studies, which are the first step towards a future potential Phase II clinical study for treatment of diabetic foot ulcers.
An in vitro and a series of animal models will be used to evaluate the role PLX cells have in healing diabetic foot ulcers. Through a novel academic-industrial collaborative research paradigm, these trials, with proposed support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will be used as a bridge towards the potential treatment of patients with diabetic foot ulcers.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that approximately 12% of patients afflicted with diabetes develop a foot ulcer. This translates into approximately 2.5 million patients with foot ulcers in the US alone.
