Posted by Scott R. King on July 06, 2001 at 16:58:22:
I have been updating our web site. Mostly small things. I have brought our time line closer to the regulatory reality (thank you Pete Hammonds!) and updated the competition section in light of what has happened over the past 18 months. The only big new thing is a detailed company slide show you can access from the index page. I left the figures in high resolution so don't try unless you have broadband because the graphics files are very big.
We are making progress, but slower than we had hoped. We are very happy with the sheets themselves, and we know islets are happy in them in vitro. But no one has ever tried to attach a thin sheet bioartificial organ to a liver, so we are working blind. (Previous macro devices like Encelle and Theracyte have gone under the skin.) As we posted in March, with simple sutures the sutures pulled out of the liver. So since then we have been trying new methods for attachment and new sites. The good news is that we now have a good idea what is working and are getting happy again. We have some good options now for securing the sheets.
The next step is to look at the viability of islets in sheets in the varous candidate locations over time. We have to squeeze every dollar at ISM so these next experiments will be in small animals. (Never use a dog when a rat will do.) When we know how well islets in sheets survive on the liver versus for instance the diaphragm we will be ready to go back into large animal experiments.