Haima Therapeutics Receives Phase I SBIR award from the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to Develop its SynthoPlateTM Product
June 1, 2019. Cleveland, OH. Haima Therapeutics has been awarded a $300K Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the development of SynthoPlateTM, a hemostatic nanotechnology to mitigate bleeding in thrombocytopenic patients.
“We are very excited to receive this SBIR funding and other support from the NIH to advance SynthoPlateTM as a potential treatment to mitigate bleeding in thrombocytopenia,” said Dr. Michael Bruckman, Chief Operating Officer of Haima and Principle Investigator on the grant. “The planned studies are critical to hitting important development milestones for SynthoPlateTM, and we are hopeful that our novel approach will meet a critical unmet need in patients with thrombocytopenia.”
Thrombocytopenia, a condition characterized by low platelet counts, affects 150,000+ people each year (US), and patients with severe thrombocytopenia are at high risk of excessive, uncontrollable bleeding. The current standard of care to mitigate these risks is transfusion with donor platelet products; however, platelets derived from donors are expensive, carry significant risk of infections, have variable hemostatic efficacy, and have short shelf life (~3-5 days). Haima’s innovative SynthoPlateTM technology can mimic platelet’s hemostatic functions while providing advantages of large-scale production and sterilizability to reduce contamination risk and ensure long shelf life.
SynthoPlateTM was invented in the laboratory of Dr. Anirban Sen Gupta, a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Sen Gupta and his colleague, Dr. Christa Pawlowski, founded Haima Therapeutics in 2016 with a vision to translate the SynthoPlateTM technology to the clinic. In March 2018, Haima and Case Western Reserve University entered into an exclusive option agreement to license the SynthoPlateTM technology.
The studies under this grant build on our previous work supported by Phase I SBIR awards from the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense and aim to demonstrate the hemostatic efficacy of SynthoPlateTM in mouse models of thrombocytopenia. These three back-to-back awards have led to Haima receiving a total of $675K in non-dilutive funding support for translational advancement of the SynthoPlate product.
About Haima Therapeutics:
Haima Therapeutics is a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing bio-inspired therapies to mitigate bleeding in multiple therapeutic indications including traumatic injury, surgery, and thrombocytopenia. Haima has developed a novel, fully-synthetic nanoparticle-based hemostatic technology is called SynthoPlateTM that mitigates bleeding by acting at the site of injury and amplifying your body’s natural clotting mechanisms. Learn more at www.haimatherapeutics.com and follow us on twitter @HaimaThr. For more information, please contact Michael Bruckman at mbruckman@haimatherapeutics.com
The research to be performed is supported by the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R43HL145948. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
About Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is one of the country's leading private research institutions. Located in Cleveland, we offer a unique combination of forward-thinking educational opportunities in an inspiring cultural setting. Our leading-edge faculty engage in teaching and research in a collaborative, hands-on environment. Our nationally recognized programs include arts and sciences, dental medicine, engineering, law, management, medicine, nursing and social work. About 5,100 undergraduate and 6,200 graduate students comprise our student body. Visit case.edu to see how Case Western Reserve thinks beyond the possible.