First Minimally-Invasive Procedure Performed In Mesoblast Ltd's Phase 2 Stem Cell Trial For Lumbar Disc Repair

Mesoblast Ltd announced that the first minimally-invasive lumbar disc procedure had been successfully performed in the Phase 2 clinical trial of its proprietary adult Mesenchymal Precursor Cell (MPC) product for the treatment of low back pain and degenerative disc disease. The outpatient procedure lasted less than 20 minutes, with the patient fully awake and under light sedation. The patient was shortly discharged and there were no complications. The procedure was undertaken by leading spine surgeon, Kenneth Pettine, M.D., at the Spine Institute and Loveland Surgery Center in Colorado, a United States Spine Center of Excellence. Dr Pettine is a founder of the Spine Institute, an international leader in non-fusion surgery of the spine, and the co-inventor of Medtronic's Maverick artificial lumbar disc device. In preclinical trials, a single minimally invasive injection of Mesoblast's allogeneic MPCs into severely damaged intervertebral discs resulted in significant reversal of the degenerative process, regrowth of disc cartilage, and sustained normalization of disc pathology, anatomy and function for at least six months.