Preserving Life by Emulating Nature
X-Therma pioneers a breakthrough biopreservation platform, transforming “living” medicines into on demand treatments. We empower patients with access to safe, reliable organs, engineered tissues, and advanced cell & gene therapies, dismantling the obstacles of time and distance.
Products
For Cell and Tissue Cryopreservation
XT-Thrive®
For Kidney Preservation
XT-ViVo® and TimeSeal®
XT-ViVo® and TimeSeal® received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in 2022. This turnkey solution stores kidneys for up to 5 days at high subzero temperatures for transplantation.
The Problem
Not Enough Time
90% Unmet Needs
80% Transplantable Organs Left Unused
Just Hours to Keep Organs Alive
1 Per Hour Die on Waitlist
Did you know that 80% of transplantable organs are NOT being transplanted, especially hearts and lungs?
In organ transplantation, we are racing against TIME on Ice every day, battling an extremely slim window where every minute matters. We currently perfuse and store an organ in preservation solution that is kept between 2-8°C in an igloo cooler on wet-ice. This only allows organ survival for less than a day. For the heart, that is an ephemeral 4 hrs. This extremely tight race severely hinders organ accessibility, breeds extreme risk, creates a logistics nightmare for the transplant team and significantly impacts patient survival. To win such a race, we MUST remove TIME from the equation.
The Problem
For Cell Manufacturing, DMSO and Serum No Longer Meet Integrated Demands
Poor Performance
• Poor post-thaw cell survival as low as 15-20%
• Cell functionality impaired
Toxic*
• Profound in vivo toxicity
• Severe injection site pain/neurotoxicity
• Adverse Genotoxicity
Hindered Scalability
• Processing nightmare
• Limited scale-up production
• Batch variation
Biopreservation is the key for commercial cell manufacturing & processing, which happens 3-5 times throughout the process. However, preservation has seen little improvement. Existing standards use 5-10% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) with serum. A new solution is needed to enable “off-the-shelf” living medicines.
*Nature, Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 4641 (2019)
The Problem
Toxicity of In Vitro Materials
DMSO Adverse Toxicity and Genotoxicity
Poor Functional Recovery <10% (human eggs)
In Vitro Fertilization uses a high concentration of toxic vitrification media to freeze eggs or embryos that can kill a cat just in one teaspoon taken orally. This causes severe cell shrinkage and damage to the cell membrane, ultimately leading to a negative impact on the viability of the eggs, giving less than 10% with functional recovery.
The extreme changes in microRNAs and alterations in the epigenetic landscape indicate that DMSO is not inert. Its use should be reconsidered, especially for preservation of embryos and oocytes, since it may impact embryonic development.
*Nature, Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 4641 (2019)
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. "
- Albert Einstein
As a fundamental principle of nature, reducing temperature extends time, but we had to find a way around the detrimental impact of ice crystals. Inspired by antifreeze proteins (AFPs) produced by arctic species who thrive in sub-zero environments, we developed a chemically defined antifreeze molecule that is hyper effective, non-toxic, biocompatible, and scalable.
