Patents to Advanced Tissue Sciences

Applied Genetics News,  August 1, 1998  

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Advanced Tissue Sciences (10933 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, Ca 920387; Tel: 619/450-5730), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) and Children's Hospital (Boston, MA) have been the issued three U.S. patents covering the growth of vascularized human tissues or organs on three-dimensional biocompatible, biodegradable, and nonbiodegradable polymer scaffolds inside the body (in vivo).

Advanced Tissue Sciences has license rights to these patents with respect to a broad range of tissues and organs. These patents complement the company's core patents covering the growth of tissues outside the body (ex vivo) and expand its opportunity to develop tissue-engineered products. Research using this technology on a wide variety of tissues and organs has been described in more than 400 scientific publications and presentations over the last eight years.

Under the technology described in the three patents (U.S. Patents 5,759,830; 5,770,193; and 5,770,417), vascularized tissues are grown by first seeding cells on a scaffold and then implanting the cell- scaffold in the patient at the site in need of tissue repair or replacement. Over time, the cells grow into a fully functional tissue using the body as the incubator.

Tissue engineering -- the science of creating new tissues and organs for transplantation -- has already successfully produced products that are helping patients worldwide, according to Gail K. Naughton, president and COO of Advanced Tissue Sciences. "These patents provide us with the opportunity to develop tissue-engineered products in a way that benefits the patient and can be cost effective," she says.

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