SALT LAKE CITY, May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- DiscGenics, a biotechnology company developing off-the-shelf cell therapies for back pain, announced today that it has been selected as a winner of Red Herring's Top 100 North America Award. This award honors the year's most promising private technology companies from over 3,000 applicants. Over the course of a few short years, DiscGenics has turned an innovative research idea into a scalable and commercially viable manufacturing process to create frozen banks of healing discogenic cells derived from an adult human source. These cells are naturally found within the spine, and after external manipulation, via DiscGenics' patented culture process, they become more active and ready to produce disc tissue. When utilized in a treatment called IDCT (Injectable Discogenic Cell Therapy), the cells safely regenerate the intervertebral disc in both laboratory and animal studies. DiscGenics intends to file an IND application with the FDA for IDCT to start human clinical trials in the US within the next year.
Flagg Flanagan, DiscGenics' CEO, writes: "We are honored to be selected by Red Herring for this award, which recognizes our innovative science and proprietary technology. We believe that a treatment such as DiscGenics' IDCT has the potential to dramatically reduce pain and improve the quality of life for millions of people. We look forward to completing the remainder of our preclinical milestones and to the prospect of initiating human clinical trials in 2015". Along with this award, DiscGenics has been recently recognized as a Utah Innovation Awards Finalist.
About DiscGenics, Inc.
DiscGenics is a privately funded biotechnology company developing advanced spinal therapeutics to treat patients with diseases of the intervertebral disc. We are currently developing IDCT, a novel off-the-shelf injectable therapeutic based on regenerative medicine and progenitor cell science to treat pain associated with degenerative disc disease. News and other information on the company are available at http://www.DiscGenics.com.