CytoSorbents Corporation (OTCBB: CTSO) is a critical-care focused therapeutic device company using blood purification to treat life-threatening illnesses. These are common, major conditions seen in the intensive care unit (ICU), such as sepsis and infection, severe trauma, burns, lung injury, and pancreatitis, that afflicts millions of people each year yet lacks effective therapies, leading to a mortality rate that often exceeds 30%. Failure of multiple organs, such as the lungs, heart, kidneys and liver, is the leading causes of death from these conditions, for which very little can be done today. Hospital acquired infections are another leading cause of death in the ICU. CytoSorbents is developing novel and advanced blood purification therapies designed to actively prevent, mitigate, or reverse the development of organ failure and infection, thereby potentially reducing illness severity and helping patients to heal and recover faster. Ultimately the goal is to improve patient outcome and save healthcare costs. Nearly 1% of the US gross domestic product (GDP), or approximately $90 billion, is spent on critical care annually in the US, and billions of dollars are lost by hospitals each year due to a lack of effective therapies.
CytoSorbents’ purification technology is covered by 29 issued patents and is based on biocompatible, highly porous polymer beads that can actively remove toxic substances from blood and other bodily fluids by pore capture and adsorption. The technology has been selected for funding by both the U.S. Army and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in a Phase I SBIR grant for trauma, and DARPA’s “Dialysis-like Therapeutics” program for the treatment of sepsis, respectively. The technology is also the basis of the Company’s two lead programs, CytoSorb™ and HemoDefend.
CytoSorb™, the Company’s flagship product, targets the lucrative critical care market and is now approved in the European Union (E.U.) under the CE Mark as a first-in-class extracorporeal cytokine filter that is available for purchase throughout the E.U to be used in cases where cytokines are elevated. By passing a patient’s blood through the CytoSorb™device, the goal is to modulate the immune system by removing excessive cytokines, often called "cytokine storm," in critically-ill patients that can lead to deadly inflammation, multiple organ failure, immune dysfunction, and often death. CytoSorb™ has demonstrated statistically significant reductions in mortality in septic patients at high risk of death and is now available for sale in Germany for the treatment of critical care illnesses under a controlled market release, with a planned broad product launch in Germany anticipated for the first half of 2012 and availability in other E.U. countries, assuming adequate and timely funding, and continued positive results from its clinical studies.
HemoDefend is a development-stage blood purification technology platform targeting the vast blood transfusion industry, intended to reduce transfusion reactions and safeguard the quality and safety of blood products. There are more than 30 million blood and blood product transfusions each year in the US alone. The HemoDefend technology utilizes the Company's unique polymer bead technology to remove many substances, such as antibodies, free hemoglobin and inflammatory mediators, that can cause potentially serious and sometimes fatal transfusion reactions.
CytoSorb™ and HemoDefend are just two of a number of different resins the Company has designed for various medical applications, including improved dialysis, the potential treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, rhabdomyolysis in trauma, removal of chemotherapy drugs during treatment of cancer with high dose regional chemotherapy, drug detoxification, and others.
Additional information is available for download on the Company's website: www.cytosorbents.com