Aethlon Medical and SeaStar Medical together announced a cross-licensing agreement to jointly develop their respective medical devices to address the care and management of critically ill patients.

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Image: Hemopurifier is a blood purification cartridge designed to separate different particles from the blood. Photo: Courtesy of Belova59 from Pixabay.

The collaboration is expected to enable the development of Aethlon’s Hemopurifier alongside SeaStar’s cartridges for multiple clinical targets.

Aethlon Medical develops the Hemopurifier, a blood purification cartridge designed to remove different particles from the blood, including cancer promoting exosomes for the treatment of cancers with no adequate alternative therapy and viruses for the treatment of life-threatening viral diseases.

SeaStar develops cartridges platform including the FDA 510K cleared CLR 2.0 Hemofilter which is used for acute kidney injury (AKI), congestive heart failure (CHF) and pulmonary oedema. The device is being marketed for organ preservation in the solid organ transplant market.

SeaStar Medical chief executive officer Charles Fisher Jr. said: “Aethlon and SeaStar align on combining their complementary novel medical devices to address critical unmet needs. Combinations of the Hemopurifier and the SeaStar cartridges present unique and promising development paths.

“After joining Aethlon’s board of directors in November 2017, I realized that both teams are equally passionate about providing innovative medical products designed to improve the survival of patients with cancer, infectious and inflammatory disorders.”

The cartridges from both the companies are designed to suit the standard, hospital ICU-based equipment, either independently or together.

Both the companies intend to jointly develop the complete treatment solution and allow deployment into multiple inpatient and outpatient treatment settings in any clinical indication.

In addition, the combined use of the Hemopurifier and CPCs is expected to improve indications for use, including infectious disease, oncology and organ preservation and transplant.

Aethlon Medical interim chief executive officer Timothy Rodell said: “The potential synergy of our two companies’ platforms should allow penetration into multiple unaddressed markets.

“Many solid organ transplant patients’ outcomes are impacted by viral infections, including hepatitis C and cytomegalovirus (CMV), so the demonstrated ability of the Aethlon Hemopurifier to clear viruses could be complementary to SeaStar’s CLR 2.0’s ability to improve donor organ function.”