Haima Therapeutics receives $3M from the U.S. Department of Defense to study its Synthetic Platelet Technology in combination with Other Blood Surrogate Products
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020. Cleveland, OH. Haima Therapeutics LLC (“Haima”) has received two awards from the Department of Defense (DoD) to support research focused on evaluating potential co-administration of its synthetic platelet hemostatic technology, SynthoPlateTM, with lyophilized plasma and a novel red blood cell surrogate (ErythroMer, Kalocyte, Inc.). The central focus is to integrate Haima’s dried synthetic platelets with other promising, field-deployable technologies to provide rapid rescue from hemorrhagic shock and mitigating bleeding with the goal of zero preventable deaths after injury for our traumatically injured soldiers and civilians.
The DoD’s U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (MRDC) awarded Haima $1.4M under a cooperative agreement to evaluate the co-administration of SynthoPlateTM with lyophilized plasma to create a Hemostatically Enhanced Lyophilized Plasma (HELP) product in collaboration with Dr. Michael A. Meledeo at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR, San Antonio).
The DoD’s Combat Readiness Medical Research Program (CRRP) awarded Haima a $1.6M research contract to evaluate the co-administration of SynthoPlateTM with lyophilized plasma and Kalocyte’s ErythroMer (PI: Dr. Nivesh Mittal) to evaluate the potential of a fully dried Whole Blood Surrogate (WBS) in collaboration with Drs. Allan Doctor and Dipanjan Pan at University of Maryland – Baltimore (UMB).
Robust clinical studies have demonstrated that early transfusion of whole blood (WB) or controlled ratio of blood components (platelets + RBC + plasma) are associated with significant improvement of survival in severely injured patients. However, WB or blood component products are of very limited availability due to a variety of logistical challenges, especially in emergency pre-hospital settings like battlefield or civilian roadside. This leads to a significant number of preventable deaths from trauma. Products like HELP or WBS may provide a ‘surrogate technology’ for point-of-injury on demand hemostatic resuscitation that could have a tremendous benefit in saving lives.
“Mounting evidence clearly indicates that resuscitation outcomes for hemorrhagic shock are optimized by (1) use of either whole blood or combined individual blood components as the initial resuscitation fluid of choice and (2) prompt in-field administration of this fluid at the point of injury. This project will explore means to combine shelf-stable, freeze-dried blood components for use as a field-deployable resuscitation fluid. We’re delighted to collaborate with Haima Therapeutics to evaluate ErythroMer as the RBC surrogate for this novel approach and to provide unique state-of-the-art bench and in vivo models of coagulopathy and hemorrhagic shock to support this project.” said Dr. Allan Doctor, KaloCyte’s CSO and Co-Founder and Director of the Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis (CBOTH) at UMB.
“We’re excited for the early evaluation of our lead product, a field deployable freeze-dried synthetic platelet called SynthoPlateTM, in combination with other blood surrogates for treating injured soldiers in the field and seek to achieve zero preventable deaths.” said Dr. Michael Bruckman, Haima’s CEO. “This funding will enable our team to engage with KaloCyte, developer of ErythroMer, a highly promising red blood-cell surrogate currently in preclinical development, and the world-renowned U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research. These projects will allow us to evaluate the safety and efficacy of our unique combined treatment approaches.”
About Haima Therapeutics
Haima Therapeutics is a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company developing platelet-inspired technologies for the treatment of a variety of blood-related diseases. Haima’s initial focus is on platelet’s primary responsibility, hemostasis, wherein they are developing bio-inspired therapies to mitigate bleeding in multiple therapeutic indications, including traumatic injury, surgery, and thrombocytopenia. Haima’s lead product is called SynthoPlate, a novel, fully-synthetic hemostatic technology that mitigates bleeding by acting at the site of injury and amplifying your body’s natural clotting mechanisms. In 2020, Haima has received a $750K Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to outsource manufacturing (that comes with an additional $300K in funding) and a $150K award from the State of Ohio Technology Validation and Start-Up Fund (TVSF) program to evaluate SynthoPlate for veterinary use. The inventor of SynthoPlate and founder of Haima, Anirban Sen Gupta, a Professor at CWRU Biomedical Engineering, received a $3.8M award from the Department of Defense (DoD) Army Peer Review Medical Research Program (PRMRP) to evaluate dried SynthoPlate in numerous animal models; the award includes a significant subaward to Haima to manufacture SynthoPlate.
Learn more at www.haimatherapeutics.com, follow us on twitter @HaimaThr, or email us at info@haimatherapeutics.com
This work is supported by the US Army Medical Research and Development Command under Contract No.
W81XWH-20-C-0144 and Cooperative Agreement No. W81XWH-20-2-0052.
The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this release are those of the author(s) and should not
be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy or decision unless so designated by other
documentation.