JUPITER, FL–(Marketwired – July 17, 2014) – Cytonics Corporation, orthopedic research, and development company announced today that a recent peer-reviewed paper from an independent lab had validated Cytonics’ lead therapeutic, alpha-2-macroglobulin, as an effective treatment for post-traumatic osteoarthritis.

In the July issue of Rheumatology and Arthritis (Vol 66 No. 7, July 2014), a seminal paper by Wang et al entitled “Identification of a2-Macroglobulin as a Master Inhibitor of Cartilage-Degrading Factors That Attenuates the Progression of Post-traumatic Osteoarthritis,” the authors concluded that while the endogenous concentration of a2M in the synovial fluid of osteoarthritis subjects was insufficient to inactivate the high concentrations of catabolic factors in the synovial fluid, supplemental intra-articular a2m provides chondral protection in posttraumatic osteoarthritis.

This paper supports and validates the work that Cytonics has pursued over the last ten years, and echoes the company’s 2013 ORS presentations entitled, “Is There a Chondroprotective effect of Autologous Protease Inhibitor Concentrate on an Osteoarthritis Rabbit Model? A Pilot Study” and “Chondroprotective Effect of Alpha-2-Macroglobulin (A2M) on Bovine Cartilage Explants.”

“Dr. Wang and his team, with support from NIH and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, have done a superb job of demonstrating the role and potential therapeutic importance of alpha-2-macroglobulin, a broad-based protease inhibitor that has been shown to inhibit those proteases implicated in cartilage degeneration,” said Dr. Gaetano Scuderi, Founder and President of Cytonics. “This paper may open the door to a new molecular treatment for osteoarthritis, just when hyaluronic acid as an OA treatment is falling out of favor. We congratulate Dr. Wang and his team on the high quality and breadth of their work.”

About Cytonics Corporation
Cytonics is a private research and development firm in Jupiter, Florida developing molecular diagnostic and therapeutic products for chronic orthopedic and other diseases. Its initial product, Autologous Platelet-Integrated Concentrate, (APIC) System was cleared in January of this year as a platelet-rich-plasma (PRP). It also developed autologous cell-free a2M concentrates and other forms of a2M therapeutics including optimized recombinant forms, and recently gained regulatory clearances to begin clinical studies with some of its other products.