Avita Medical’s unique regenerative technology offers hope for burn victims

Unique Regenerative Technology Featured in Army Technology Magazine July/August Issue

Avita Medical Ltd. (ASX: AVH), (OTCQX: AVMXY), a medical device company specializing in the treatment of wounds and skin defects, today said a branch of the U.S. Military says the U.S. Department of Defense ‘wants to use’ the company’s ReCell^® technology, which it described as offering a possible ‘paradigm shift’ in skin injury treatment.

The July/August 2015 issue of Army Technology Magazine, in an article titled “Innovative treatments offer hope for burn victims,” explored new strategies being evaluated by the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The Fort Detrick, Maryland-based group has a stated goal to resolve if regenerative medicine – with its potential to use a patient’s own repair mechanisms – can be used to heal traumatic wounds faster, and reduce scarring, contractures and disability amongst U.S. military personnel.

“The DOD wants to use these technologies to treat complex traumatic injuries,” explained Kristi Pottol, Program Director of the Tissue Injury and Regenerative Medicine Project Management Office.

The article explained how Avita Medical’s device took only 30 minutes to use a patient’s own cells to create a healing suspension, which can treat a skin wound 80 times larger than the skin sample taken. The device was one of two regenerative medicine technologies covered in the article, which explained that “ReCell speeds the healing process, decreases the need to harvest skin from donor sites and improves the appearance of the burn scars.”

Dr. Wendy Dean, a medical advisor at the Tissue Injury and Regenerative Medicine Program Management Office said that technologies such as ReCell “could be the first substantial change in how burn and skin injuries are treated in the last half century…. sparing burn patients the pain of large donor sites, or offering surgeons a ready-made, permanent option for wound coverage could lead to a paradigm shift in skin injury treatment.”

The device has already been used on US personnel wounded in Afghanistan under special compassionate use dispensations. Some of the work has been performed at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the nation’s leading military hospital.

“For a medical device to be useful for combat injuries, it must be easy to use and deploy, and we believe ReCell meets these criteria, being portable and completely self-contained,” commented Adam Kelliher, Chief Executive Officer of Avita Medical. “Using it quickly will make it more effective on burns and other skin wounds, and this is why we think it is an ideal tool for military physicians.”