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Sangart Announces New Facility Plans
SAN DIEGO, CA (July 25, 2005) Sangart, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen transport agents, today announced that it has leased a new facility to which it plans to relocate by year end.
The new facility already contains most of the infrastructure needed to fulfill Sangart's future needs including commercial-scale production of its lead product candidate Hemospan® (MP4), a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier designed to serve as an alternative for blood transfusions. The facility is expected to provide Sangart with a production capacity of 250,000 units of Hemospan® per year with an expansion potential up to four times that amount.
Robert M. Winslow, M.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sangart, commented "This facility represents a major step forward in our commercialization planning efforts. With only minor modifications this new location will enable us to directly control Hemospan® manufacturing at a cost within our target range."
Sangart's approach to the development of oxygen transport agents employs novel technology, the result of more than a decade of peer-reviewed research into the mechanism of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin. Preclinical and clinical studies indicate that Hemospan® is free of harmful vasoactivity and provides targeted oxygen delivery to tissues at risk of oxygen deprivation.
About Sangart
Sangart is a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of medical products designed for use as alternatives to blood transfusions.
Dr. Robert Winslow, a world-renowned authority in the field of oxygen transport, founded Sangart in 1998. In the two decades prior to founding Sangart, Dr. Winslow and his colleagues studied and defined mechanisms of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin solutions, funded by competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. The counterintuitive discoveries by Dr. Winslow's group on the effective action of oxygen transport agents have been patented and published in numerous scientific articles. From this experience, Sangart's lead product, Hemospan®, was designed using unique polyethylene glycol conjugation to create a hemoglobin-based product that is intended to serve as an alternative to donated blood.
The key breakthroughs in the development of Hemospan® were the understanding of the mechanisms of vasoconstriction and the development of simplified production methods that are designed to make the final product commercially viable. These breakthroughs laid the groundwork for Sangart's business concept of developing cost-effective oxygen carriers that can be used in lieu of transfused red blood cells during episodes of temporary blood loss, such as surgery or trauma.
To learn more about Sangart or Hemospan®, please visit www.sangart.com
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Edelman
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Edelman
(323) 202-1053
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