Ossium Health, a bioengineering company developing the world's first bank of organ donor bone marrow, and the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match®, a global leader working to save lives through cellular therapy, today announced their partnership to expand access to vital bone marrow and accelerate the industry’s ability to make bone marrow transplants accessible at scale.

Ossium and NMDP/Be The Match are kicking off a clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of Ossium’s bone marrow product. PRESERVE I “A First-in-Human Study of HLA-Partially to Fully Matched Allogeneic Cryopreserved Deceased Donor Bone Marrow Transplantation for Patients with Hematologic Malignancies” (NCT05589896) is anticipated to open in Q4 2023. Once the trial is completed, a subsequent multi-center, phase II clinical trial will open. With favorable trial results, the two organizations will then work to integrate the bone marrow donations in Ossium Health's proprietary bank into NMDP/Be The Match's national donor registry. Once on the national registry, Ossium Health’s donated bone marrow will become a resource for doctors from nearly 160 U.S. transplant centers who utilize the Be The Match Registry® to offer patients additional options when searching for matches. This partnership will dramatically increase Ossium’s ability to serve patients at scale, and allow NMDP/Be The Match to offer a new source of life-saving bone marrow to a wider group of patients in need.

“With 18,000 patients in need of a bone marrow transplant each year, we need to ensure that people have access to the broadest set of donors possible to make life-saving matches a reality for all,” said Kevin Caldwell, CEO & Co-Founder at Ossium Health. “We’re thrilled to work with NMDP/Be The Match to supplement their registry with viable donors that enable more people to receive on-demand treatment.”

Ossium isolates bone marrow from authorized deceased donors, which is phenotypically and functionally equivalent to cells from living donors, and then cryopreserves and stores the marrow until it is requested by a physician. Ossium’s approach can drastically reduce the wait period for bone marrow transplants. Once the clinical trials and registry integration are complete, Ossium will provide off-the-shelf bone marrow solutions, complementing NMDP/Be The Match's existing U.S. registry of more than 9 million potential living donors.

“At Be The Match, we’re devoted to maximizing the opportunity for patients to find the best possible match, so Ossium is a great partner for us,” said Amy Ronneberg, CEO of NMDP/Be The Match. “We’re energized by their industry-shifting donation source that could open the door for so many more people to receive the bone marrow transplants they need, and look forward to all that we can accomplish together to improve the lives of people battling blood cancer and blood disorders.”

To learn more about Ossium's efforts to fight blood cancer, see this AP article.

About Ossium Health®

Ossium Health is a bioengineering company that leverages its unique deceased donor bone marrow banking platform to develop stem cell therapies for patients with life-threatening blood and immune diseases. Founded in 2016, the company is led by Kevin Caldwell, its CEO, Co-Founder & President, and Erik Woods, its Chief Science Officer, Co-Founder & EVP. Ossium Health is an FDA-Registered Tissue Bank, is accredited by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA), and its laboratory is certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA).

About the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match®

The National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match® is the leading global partner working to save lives through cellular therapy. With 35 years of experience managing the most diverse registry of potential unrelated blood stem cell donors and cord blood units in the world, NMDP/Be The Match is a proven partner in providing cures to patients with life-threatening blood and marrow cancers and diseases. Through their global network, they connect centers and patients to their best cell therapy option—from blood stem cell transplant to a next-generation therapy—and collaborate with cell and gene therapy companies to support therapy development and delivery through Be The Match BioTherapies®. NMDP/Be The Match is a tireless advocate for the cell therapy community, working with hematologists/oncologists to remove barriers to consultation and treatment, and supporting patients through no-cost programs to eliminate non-medical obstacles to cell therapy. In addition, they are a global leader in research through the CIBMTR® (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research®)—a collaboration with Medical College of Wisconsin, investing in and managing research studies that improve patient outcomes and advance the future of care

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