Irvine-based regenerative medicine company AiVita Biomedical Inc. feels good that it has a cash-generating beauty product arm to cushion clinical development of its cancer drug.
It announced last week that it enrolled the first patient in a double-blind phase two clinical study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of its immunotherapy for women with ovarian cancer. The trial is being conducted at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.
Ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer among women and the deadliest of gynecologic cancers, according to the company. A woman’s lifetime risk of developing it is one in 75, according to the American Cancer Society. AiVita’s immunotherapy, which uses the patient’s immune cells, is designed to teach the cells to identify and destroy tumor cells.
Chief Executive Hans Keirstead said proceeds from the sale of AiVita’s skincare products will support the trial. It soft-launched consumer skincare product Root of Skin last month. The trio, an eye lotion, facial serum and tinted primer, is currently available only on the Root of Skin website and retails for approximately $55 each.
“We are in the process of putting together videos—our influencer campaign—and will fully launch next year,” Keirstead said. The Business Journal earlier reported that the company hired Christine Oddo, founder and chief executive of Madison Lux Group in Los Angeles—“She did the Kardashian [PerfectSkin] line,” according to Keirstead—to lead the marketing campaign. It plans to go directly to consumers with consumer-generated content using video social network platform Indi.
The new line is separate from existing skincare line Provoque, which it licenses from and pays royalties on net sales to Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Caladrius Biosciences Inc. Keirstead sold his stem cell company to Caladrius in 2014 and repurchased it last year.
Root of Skin is about half the cost of Provoque.
The company also announced it struck a deal with custom formulator and beauty products developer LaCore Labs LLC in Carrollton, Texas. LaCore will use AiVita’s proprietary ingredient to create a line of skincare products to be distributed across Asia through LaCore subsidiary Generation New Online. The first Asian countries targeted are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and China.
Dementia
The University of California-Irvine received an $11.35 million grant from the National Institute of Aging to support an effort to create a mouse more closely mirroring human Alzheimer’s disease.
“Over the last two decades, the search for new Alzheimer’s drugs has been stymied, in part because … the animal test subjects don’t fully mirror enough of the major features of the disease,” said UCI Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Andrea Tenner, who’s leading the project.
Scientists currently investigating anti-dementia medications must use mice bred to have a rare, aggressive form of Alzheimer’s that accounts for less than 2% of human cases, according to UCI. The goal is that the new mouse more accurately mimic human Alzheimer’s conditions.
Bits & Pieces
Aliso Viejo-based Cianna Medical Inc. rolled out a training and certification program to support facilities adopting the Savi Scout Radar Breast Localization system. The product, which can be implanted with no restriction on the length of time the reflector can remain in the breast, is designed to help surgeons and radiologists precisely locate and remove breast cancer tumors without wires. The surgical-guidance system first received Food and Drug Administration clearance in 2014. … Artemis Hospital, one of the leading multispecialty hospitals in India, became the first hospital in India to adopt the Masimo Patient SafetyNet, a supplemental remote monitoring and clinician notification system, across all hospital care areas in the Delhi National Capital Region. Irvine-based Masimo Corp. makes patient monitoring devices. … MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center and MemorialCare Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital Long Beach, part of the MemorialCare Health System in Fullerton, were verified as level two trauma centers by the American College of Surgeons.
