Histogenics Corporation Adds to its Scientific Advisory Board

Histogenics Corporation, a regenerative medicine company that develops and commercializes products in the musculoskeletal space, has added Professor Lawrence Bonassar to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The SAB is providing strategic scientific and technical oversight as the company brings NeoCart through its ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial, and seeks to expand its pipeline with additional indications and next-generation cartilage therapies by leveraging its biomaterials manufacturing experience and cell therapy technology platform.
 
Dr. Bonassar is a professor at Cornell University in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His research focuses on cartilage biomechanics and tissue engineering, with a goal of understanding structure-property relationships in cartilage to elucidate mechanisms of disease and inform design of tissue replacements. He has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts, is an inventor on 11 patents and won several national and international awards including the Hansjorg Wyss Research Award at the World Forum for Spine Research. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, Dr. Bonassar was an assistant professor in the Center for Tissue Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and received both his masters and doctoral degrees from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Bonassar also completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
 
“We are pleased to have Dr. Bonassar join our team of scientific advisors. Our Sponsored Research Agreement with his lab at Cornell has been successful in demonstrating the biomechanical competence of cartilage tissue engineered using our NeoCart manufacturing technology. The work we have done together has resulted in two presentations to date, the first at the Orthopedic Research Society annual meeting in March 2016 and a more recent presentation at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in October 2016,” said Stephen Kennedy, chief technology officer of Histogenics. “Dr. Bonassar’s expertise in biomechanics and tissue engineering will be invaluable to Histogenics as we advance NeoCart through our ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial and prepare to file a biologics license application with the FDA.”
 
Dr. Bonassar joins current SAB members Dr. Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, Ph.D., professor of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California Davis; Dr. Charles Cooney, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff, Ph.D., professor Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Shuichi Mizuno, Ph.D., assistant professor, Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Histogenics; Dr. Lonnie Shea, Ph.D., professor Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan; and Dr. R. Lane Smith, Ph.D., professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine.

NeoCart is a cartilage-like, tissue-engineered implant created from a patient’s own cartilage cells that is currently in Phase 3 clinical development. The ongoing 245-patient clinical trial is designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of NeoCart as a first-line therapy for full thickness knee cartilage defects in skeletally mature adults ages 18 to 59 and to show superiority of NeoCart against the current standard of care, microfracture. Histogenics is conducting the trial under a Special Protocol Assessment with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and expects enrollment to be between 190 and 200 patients at the end of 2016 and to be complete by the end of the second quarter of 2017. Histogenics designed and manufactures NeoCart using a proprietary, ex vivo bioengineering process so that each NeoCart implant is primed to begin functioning like healthy cartilage upon implantation in the knee. Histogenics believes these attributes may offer patients a more rapid recovery and a more durable treatment option, if approved, than other products and procedures, either on the market or in development.
 
Histogenics‘ regenerative medicine platform combines expertise in cell processing, scaffolding, tissue engineering, bioadhesives and growth factors to provide solutions to treat musculoskeletal-related conditions. NeoCart is an autologous cell therapy designed to treat cartilage defects in the knee using the patient’s own cells. Knee cartilage defects represent a significant opportunity in the United States, with an estimated 500,000 or more applicable procedures each year. NeoCart is designed to exhibit characteristics of articular, hyaline cartilage prior to and upon implantation into the knee and therefore does not rely on the body to make new cartilage, characteristics not exhibited in other current treatment options.