Apollo Hospitals ties up with cell therapy firm – Hindu Business Line

Partnership will help hospital chain offer innovative orthopaedic treatment

New Delhi, June 19:

Patients suffering from orthopaedic problems such as arthritis may now have a better and painless option than replacement surgeries.

The countrys largest hospital chain, Apollo Hospitals, on Monday entered into a tie-up with a Pune-based up-and-coming regenerative medicine company RMS Regrow to offer cell therapy treatment for bone and cartilage problems.

This exclusive partnership with RMS Regrow will allow the Chennai-headquartered hospital chain to offer advanced cell therapy treatment to patients suffering from a variety of bone or cartilage related problems caused by sports injury, accidents, ageing or wear and tear. In India, more than 1.5 million orthopaedic procedures are performed every year.

The techniques developed by RMS Regrow Ossron for bone and Chondron for cartilage are among the first set of cell therapy-based treatment modalities to receive regulatory approvals in India, said Satyen Sanghavi, Chief Scientific Officer, RMS, at a press conference here.

Cell therapy is a technique in which healthy cellular material is injected into a patient to replace diseased or dysfunctional cells.

In orthopaedic problems, it has the potential to be an alternative to knee and hip replacements.

According to Prathap Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals, the treatment will be available in 40 Apollo hospitals at a cost of 3-4 lakh, which is a fraction of the cost that one needs for similar treatment in advanced countries.

Trials carried out

Across its hospitals, as many as 200 orthopaedics have been trained to carry out the procedures which involve harvesting healthy bone or cartilage tissues from the patient and growing them outside the body before transplanted back into the affected body part.

The techniques have been found to be not only safe but very effective, Sanghavi said. While Chondron clinical trials were carried out in 350 patients, the Ossron modality was tested in 150 patients suffering from bone related problems.

Most of these trials were done in partnership with Apollo, he said.

The techniques were found to be more effective in people the age of 65 years.

According to Sanghavi, RMS Regrow developed these techniques at an R&D cost of 45 crore and over a period of eight years.

(This article was published on June 19, 2017)

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Apollo Hospitals ties up with cell therapy firm - Hindu Business Line