Michael Perry is running system checks at his 3,000-square-foot stem cell laboratory in Twin Oaks Office Park. Core 23 Biobank is the entrepreneur's eighth business.
Michael Perry knows what it takes to launch a business.
The 28-year-old serial entrepreneur has founded seven enterprises in his career, successfully selling three of his startups, but none compare to the daunting task he’s faced during the past year in starting his latest venture.
Last month, Perry launched Core 23 Biobank, a stem cell bank that freezes blood and stem cells from umbilical cords for potential use in treating numerous diseases and health conditions.
On Sept. 13, Perry and his wife, Emily, who run the business out of a 3,000-square foot office and lab at 909 E. Republic Road in Twin Oaks Office Park, were scheduled to receive their first blood bag from St. Louis via a medical carrier.
Michael Perry said a barrier to entry has been the stigma of stem cell research associated with embryonic cells. He calls harvesting embryonic cells a separate type of research.
“I have stem cells, you have stem cells, adults have stem cells, that’s part of the misconception. There isn’t hardly any research going on with embryonic stem cells because there is so much political controversy,” Perry said. “This is completely different – totally different cells, totally different collection methods.”
The Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group in Washington, D.C., recognizes the research of stem cells harvested from umbilical cord blood as well as from fat, bone marrow and other adult tissue without harm to the donor.
“An enormous amount of research involving adult stem cells is currently going on in laboratories in the United States,” the council says in a report on the ethics of stem call research and human cloning posted to FRC.org. “This research is ethically uncontroversial and has generated a number of exciting discoveries on the therapeutic front.”
Organized under Core23 Biotechnology LLC, the Perrys are targeting young cells, because studies show they have greater application in clinical therapeutic and regenerative medicine. “The closer you are to the sperm fertilizing the egg, the more powerful the cells appear to be,” Michael Perry said.
For prices beginning at $2,300, expecting families can sign up to receive a kit that allows their physician or midwife to extract and save umbilical cord blood, tissue and plasma to be frozen for future medical uses. Perry said annual fees for storage are $175 per year – held in the biobank’s liquid nitrogen tank and a freezer at -80 degrees Celsius – adding researchers have not yet identified how long the frozen materials could be useful.
“Springfield is adding another really strong feature to its health care services,” Perry said of his company’s private stem cell banking, aka cryopreservation, which collects, processes and stores umbilical cord-derived cells. “Adding that service is quite a large feat.”
While public or community stem cell banks exist for donors in the Midwest, including the St. Louis Cord Blood Bank and the Tulsa Cord Bank, Springfield is the first city in the region to have a private or family stem cell bank where individuals pay to preserve their family’s stem cells for future use, according to the Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood Foundation. The organization identifies 32 family stem cell centers in the U.S., and the nearest family bank to Springfield is in Dallas. The foundation lists first-year storage costs ranging from $495 to $2,595.
Perry, who holds a bachelor’s degree in cellular and molecular biology from Missouri State University and an MBA from Drury University, describes himself as “half-businessman, half-scientist.” Perry’s business entities include NSL LLC, a landscaping firm, and USPEX, a crowdfunding website that never fully got off the ground.
Motivating him in the latest venture, Perry said his sister died from a long-term kidney disease at age 25, and his father has a brain tumor. “I do have a very personal and real connection to this,” Perry said, adding he knew from a young age he wanted to work in medicine based on his sister’s lifelong health battles.
“Cord blood-derived stem cells are an indicated treatment or therapy for (at least) 81 diseases: lymphoma, leukemia, different cancers, metabolic disorders and immunodeficiencies,” Perry said. “If you don’t have it, your options are relatively limited and far inferior. Even if you can secure a donated product, studies have shown if your umbilical cord-derived stem cells come from a family member, (you) are more likely to not develop graph-versus-host disease or some other complication.”
Perry said since he decided to pursue the stem cell bank business, he’s worked with federal regulators, paid and nonpaid consultants, and equipment vendors to develop quality control procedures, set standard operating procedures and conduct countless tests. The work has just begun.
“Starting a company like this is like nothing else that I’ve experienced. You talk about a tremendous undertaking – holy Toledo,” Perry said, declining to disclose his startup costs.
He said one of his freezers, which can hold up to 3,000 samples, can cost up to $60,000. A blood-processing machine used for data collection is valued at more than $100,000, and a cell analysis machine is worth $250,000. He said the equipment has been secured through lease-purchase arrangements.
Perry is in the process of seeking accreditation through AABB, a Bethesda, Md.-based nonprofit accrediting association in the field of transfusion medicine and cellular therapies. The process typically takes six to nine months, depending on an organization’s preparedness and its quality system requirements, and Perry said Core 23 Biobank must log an acceptable number of units managed before becoming eligible.
Emily Perry said it’s a goal of the company to educate people on the importance of saving umbilical cords because advances in technology are opening up a world of possibilities.
“We’re excited to educate the public and doctors and nurses because this is so new. There are so many clinical trials going on right now, and there’s so much we don’t know. But in 20 years, if you have your child’s blood and tissue stored, think of what that could mean,” she said.[[In-content Ad]]
