Oxygen Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a pharmaceutical company dedicated to oxygen therapies and continuous substrate monitoring. For those unfamiliar with oxygen therapies, it refers to products that mimic human blood’s oxygen transport ability. Oxygen therapeutics are in turn broken into two categories based on transport mechanism: perfluorocarbon based, and hemoglobin based.
The Company has under development a perfluorocarbon therapeutic oxygen carrier and liquid ventilation product (Oxycyte®) and an implantable glucose sensor. Oxycyte®, once commercialized, may help patients recover from traumatic brain injury, sickle cell crisis pain, trauma, wound care, acute respiratory distress syndrome, stroke, myocardial infarction, surgery, and diabetes.
Yesterday the company announced that the animal studies conducted using rats given different doses of Oxycyte showed improved brain cognitive ability after brain trauma. The researchers found that injured animals treated with a dose of Oxycyte had significant improvement in ability to learn. The ability to learn and perform complex tasks (a maze) are the ultimate tests of higher brain function. Moreover, injured animals that received a dose of Oxycyte had significantly less brain damage compared with saline-treated animals.
“This study lends additional weight to what we believe about the potential benefits of Oxycyte in TBI. If Oxycyte can provide improved cognitive function in TBI patients, it can make a huge difference in their recovery and quality of life,” said company chairman and CEO Chris J. Stern, DBA. “As we’ve previously announced, we intend to submit an amended test protocol to the FDA to cover dose escalation studies of Oxycyte in TBI. This latest published animal study suggests that a lower dose of Oxycyte may have the same benefit as a larger one. The next round of clinical trials should tell us.”
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