StemCyte, Inc. Completes Significant Round of Financing
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ARCADIA, Calif., July 19 /PRNewswire/ - StemCyte®, Inc., a leading umbilical cord blood stem cell transplantation and therapeutic products company, today announced it has recently completed a significant round of financing from new investors within both the United States and abroad. StemCyte sold approximately $13.7MM of new securities.
StemCyte, Inc., and its subsidiary in Taiwan, maintain one of the largest and most ethnically diverse collections of donated cord blood stem cells in the world and have now provided transplant and cancer centers with umbilical cord blood units for over 200 stem cell transplantation procedures worldwide.
Cord blood stem cells have proven to be an effective substitute for traditional bone marrow transplantation, offering a new avenue of treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients with cancers and genetic diseases. In addition, the company operates a family cord blood bank, Cord Blood FamilyTrust(TM), where expectant parents are able to privately store their own baby's cord blood for potential future use.
"This latest series of financings allows both StemCyte and Cord Blood FamilyTrust to offer an even higher level of service for all of our current and future customers," said Ken Giacin, Chief Executive Officer of StemCyte. "We are very pleased that the global investment community is recognizing the value of our mission to provide the highest quality umbilical cord blood stem cell transplantation and therapeutic products to patients in need."
About Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Therapy
In the past, a baby's umbilical cord was thrown away as medical waste. Now, it is a rich source of special blood cells called stem cells. These stem cells are the building blocks of blood, organs, tissue, and the immune system, are genetically unique, and are easily collected and saved for possible future medical uses. Like bone marrow, cord blood stem cells can be transplanted as treatments for up to 70 different diseases, including leukemia, and various blood and genetic disorders.
Increasingly, doctors are turning to cord blood stem cells as a life-saving alternative to bone marrow transplants because it can be very difficult to find bone marrow matches, whereas cord bloods need less stringent matching. In fact, fewer than 50% of patients seeking stem cell transplants can obtain a stem cell product from registers of marrow donors. It's even harder for ethnic minorities or for patients of mixed ethnicity. More than 4,000 umbilical cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide, and most of these patients would not have been able to find a stem cell donor if it were not for the availability of umbilical cord bloods.
While most available data regarding transplantation using stem cells from umbilical cord bloods have been obtained among children, recent reports indicate that cord blood samples can be used to transplant many adults with results that are equal to that of matched unrelated bone marrow or peripheral blood.
About StemCyte, Inc.
StemCyte, Inc., headquartered in Arcadia, California, intends to create the largest donor umbilical cord blood stem cell bank in the world. StemCyte and its subsidiaries are dedicated to providing high quality, cost-effective, stem cell transplantation and therapy to all patients in need. StemCyte, Inc.'s management team consists of medical, scientific, clinical laboratory, tissue typing, blood banking and stem cell professionals and experts, most of whom have been recruited from world-renowned medical institutions such as Harvard Medical School, UCLA, American Red Cross, City of Hope, and others. Because of its ability to deliver high quality and high quantity viable cord blood stem cells, StemCyte is a key choice for transplant centers around the world. StemCyte has provided cord blood units to hospitals and transplant centers in the United States as well as in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Spain and Taiwan. StemCyte donor banks have now supplied cord blood units for more than 200 life-saving transplants.
About Cord Blood FamilyTrust
Cord Blood FamilyTrust, the family subsidiary of StemCyte, Inc., uses the same StemCyte International Cord Blood Center laboratory as the public bank and shares its leading-edge stem cell optimization process. This process is monitored by over 400 quality-based procedures and assures that more than 90% of collected nucleated cells will be retained after collection.
Posted on July 26, 2005 01:55 PM