Extracel® Technology History

Extracel® technology was developed by the Center for Therapeutic Biomaterials at the University of Utah in Glenn Prestwich’s lab. The technology is based on the chemical modification of hyaluronan (HA), gelatin (denatured collagen), and all other glycosaminoglycans and matricellular proteins. The modifications introduce specific crosslinkable groups that favorably alter the biological, physicochemical, and mechanical properties of the native biopolymers. This synthetic extracellular matrix (sECM) technology was originally licensed to Sentrx Surgical in 2004, which was awarded four STTR grants and a Utah Innovation Award for its technology during the two years it operated under this name. All publications from this era used the name of Carbylan-SX® (=carboxymethylhyaluronan) for the CMHA-S product and Carbylan-GSX® for the CMHA-S + Gtn-DTPH product.

The venture capital syndicate that funded Sentrx Surgical in December 2005 exclusively licensed the medical-device uses for human therapeutics, renamed the company Carbylan BioSurgery, and maintained the exclusive right to use the name Carbylan. Two new companies formed in January 2006 to commercialize the unlicensed fields of use. Sentrx Animal Care licensed all uses for veterinary medicine; Glycosan BioSystems licensed all applications for 3-D cell culture, in vitro and in vivo animal models for drug discovery, biomanufacturing, personal-care products, and tissue engineering (coexclusively with Carbylan BioSurgery).