The Perth biotech company has welcomed a US academic for a series of talks at universities across the country.
Murdoch University-based Orthocell has a role to play in medical education around the world as the company continues to bolster its presence in the United States.
Orthocell engaged US constructive surgeon and researcher Ian Valerio for its nerve repair and reconstruction symposium recently, including talks at The University of Western Australia and the University of Melbourne.
It comes after Orthocell tapped the $1.6 billion nerve repair market in the US, as it received Food and Drug Administration approval and signed first distributors for its product Remplir.
Orthocell managing director Paul Anderson said educating existing and prospective surgeons was imperative for the company.
“We see that we have knowledge that we need to share, and that knowledge we think is relevant clinically and scientifically,” he said.
“There are no better people to articulate that knowledge and to be able to engender faith and support in this product than key clinicians across the world.
“We’ve worked with esteemed people like Ian, who have great domain knowledge in this space.
“We’ve been working to develop collaborative relationships from a scientific perspective and clinical relationships from a key opinion leader perspective.”
Orthocell’s Remplir is a collagen nerve wrap, to repair peripheral nerve injuries to heal without inflammatory effects.
“When you combine the handling qualities with the science behind it, we’re the only product in the world today that’s designed to mimic the outside edge of the nerve called the epineural, which leaves us in a very, very unique position,” Mr Anderson said.
Dr Valerio said surgeons were more eager and hungrier to learn nerve repair techniques in the past decade.
“The most common injury is nerve injuries to the fingers from mining accidents, trauma … where a lot of hand surgeons – whether they be orthopaedic, plastic and even general surgery based – can actually do that and treat those in ERs and ORs across the world or country,” he said.
“Now we’re starting to advance beyond that.
“Before, it was a very black box, where nerve surgery was seen as only certain specialised centres should be doing our surgery.
“That has expanded greatly in the last decade, and part of that comes from whenever there’s times of war, you see great advancements in medicine.
“We’ve seen that throughout all the different major conflicts throughout the world over the last 100 years, but now more so as we see additional conflicts that are arising throughout the globe.
“There’s new opportunities to help treat these really devastating injuries, and with that, that usually translates to civilian world as well, as we improve care of other type of injuries, whether it be gunshot, transections from sharp injuries, car accidents, cancer or even congenital anomalies.”
Dr Valerio said the talks held across the universities would improve the way surgeons do nerve surgery.
“We’re going to show existing tried and true techniques, as well as some of the new, innovative transfer and other type of surgical advancements that we have, but also what assistive tools or devices that we can have to incorporate to improve,” he said.
Orthocell chair John van der Wielen said it took about 14 years for the company to find its niche in the nerve repair market.
“There’s been just over $80 million spent on this company,” he told Business News.
“There’s many, many failed biotechs.
“They start, they fail, but not just because they’re adventurous. It might be a failed concept.
“It might be a great concept, but it didn’t have enough money.
“Might be a great concept, had enough money but didn’t have good enough management.
“There are all these different scenarios that make something successful or fail.”
Inventor of Orthocell’s technology, Professor Ming Zheng, said the next step was to integrate the innovations as part of teaching curricula in tertiary institutions.
“Because what we actually focus on at the moment is to deliver the knowledge of what we know, but we [haven’t] passed the information about how to use this knowledge to address problem and develop an innovative approach to solve the problem,” he said.
“Most of the surgical procedures, from the innovation point of view, is that we think about how to help patients, but ... we [also] have to think about how we can help surgeons to simplify the surgical procedures and make it easier and quicker and more efficient to complete the surgical procedures.”
