Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. is developing proprietary adult stem cell-based products for the regenerative repair of damaged human tissues and other medical disorders. Aastrom's strategic position in the tissue regeneration and cell therapy sectors is enabled by its proprietary Tissue Repair Cells (TRCs), a mix of bone marrow stem and progenitor cells, and the AastromReplicell System, an industry-unique automated cell production platform used to produce cells for clinical use. Together TRCs and the AastromReplicell System provide a foundation that the Company is leveraging to produce multiple Prescription Cell Products, the first of which is now in the clinical stage in the U.S. and EU.

TRCs are the core component of the Prescription Cell Products Aastrom is developing for the bone grafting, peripheral vascular disease and cartilage markets. The company also markets the AastromReplicell System and disposable dendritic cell production kits to researchers and institutions developing vaccines to treat cancer and infectious diseases, under its Cell Production Products line.

To date, over 3,000 stem cell production runs have been completed successfully. In multi-center clinical trials involving over 160 patients, TRCs have been demonstrated to be safe and reliable, and to regenerate normal healthy tissues.

PharmaFrontiers has obtained the exclusive, worldwide license to a technology developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. This technology allows a patient to donate blood, a relatively painless and easy procedure, which is then taken to the laboratory and processed to obtain mononuclear cells. The blood is rich in mononuclear cells and a 500 ml draw contains approximately one billion of these cells. The monocytes can be dedifferentiated to pluripotent stem cells in the presence of certain growth factors to yield approximately 10 to 100 million stem cells. The resulting stem cells can be expanded and differentiated into other cell types when cultured in the presence of the appropriate growth factors. During the development of this technology the scientists at Argonne Laboratory were able to turn these monocyte derived stem cells into several different types of cells including nerve cells, liver cells, blood vessel cells, and skin cells.