What happens when bones break and become deformed or heal incorrectly?
Bone grafts can be painful and leave permanent defects to the iliac crest of the hips where they are harvested.
Irvine-based Biogennix LLC is attempting to change the nature of such grafts with a substitute, Morpheus, which is based on coral harvested from the ocean. The name refers to the “Matrix” movie franchise where the character Morpheus is the key mentor to the protagonist Neo.
With coral reef destruction from rising ocean temperatures, more eco-friendly consumers may be initially off-put by any company utilizing coral for commercial purposes.
Rest assured. President Dr. Clay Shors said the company is committed to sustainable harvests and preserving the “temperamental coral” of the ocean.
“What we’ve done here is developed a composite material—still based on marine coral, and [we] take that skeleton and artificially convert it,” said Shors, who co-founded the company with CEO Chris MacDuff.
The Bone Man
For more than 30 years, Shors, who has a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from University of Southern California, has been creating implantable medical devices such as synthetic bone graft substitutes.
In 1978, he co-founded Interpore International, which was acquired by Biomet in 2004 for $280 million.
He co-founded Biogennix in 2009 and its products have been used in more than 11,000 patients, including 5,000 alone last year. The Biogennix product line is built on osteoSPAN, a proprietary bone graft extender indicated for use in long bone defects and posterior spinal fusion.
“The July performance was the best in the company’s history,” said a company statement issued in August.
To accommodate the growth and increasing demand for its products, Biogennix is in the process of increasing its manufacturing capabilities, expanding its sales team and boosting its R&D capabilities. The company has 28 employees in a 14,000-square-foot facility.
Shors learned about the possibility of coral while teaching doctors at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where a third-year resident conducting a research project identified its porous nature as having multiple uses when influenced biochemically in the lab.
“One of these methods was to take the calcium carbonate from the coral, and [they] have huge porosity,” Shors said.
Part of that conversion process involves chemistry—a biochemical reaction occurs when surgeons place the ocean-derived bone graft substitute onto a patient’s bone. According to Shors, the body is constantly replacing bone—osteoclasts consume, or “eat” old bone while the osteocytes produce new bone.
“Phosphate can do it but it’s slow,” said Shors. “Calcium carbonate is fast.”
Last month, the company unveiled Agilon, which has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for commercial use.
“The natural next step for us, based on clinician feedback, has been to provide a similar product with even greater handling capabilities and the added benefits of collagen,” Shors said last month. “We firmly believe that Agilon can fast become a new standard of effectiveness, convenience, and handling when it comes to bone graft products.”
