VistaGen Therapeutics Inc (VTGN)

[MissionIR]

VSTA and the Frankenstein Revolution

Some call it the Frankenstein revolution, but the fact is that it heralds what may become one of the most important developments in 21st Century medical science. It’s the use of stem cell technology to build living organisms in the laboratory, paving the way for possible customized biological organ and tissue factories that could someday eliminate the need for donors. No longer science fiction, the technology to produce viable tissues and body parts is already under development.

However, there is side to the science, represented by California biotech company VistaGen Therapeutics, that is separate but no less important than the generation of replacement parts for damaged organs. It’s the creation of living tissues for the testing of drugs, allowing a degree of detailed testing and analysis superior in many ways to traditional animal tests or human trials. It’s a form of testing done right in the lab, observable at the cellular and even molecular level, providing detail unavailable any other way. In addition, it can be done at the earliest stages in drug development, long before committing to the time and expense of formal trials or actual marketing, potentially saving major pharmaceutical companies millions or even billions of dollars.

VistaGen Therapeutics has developed a proprietary pluripotent stem cell technology for use in the discovery, rescue, and development of novel drug candidates. These are drugs that have been shown to be effective, but which had to be shelved late in the game due to heart or liver toxicity, a common problem with new drugs. A pharmaceutical company may have spent a fortune on developing a drug, but it now sits on the shelf, its possible value essentially lost.

Using its Human Clinical Trials in a Test Tube bioassay system, VistaGen can now take such drugs and potentially solve the toxicity issues right in the lab. The company’s strategy is to use their technology to build a pipeline of drug rescue variants, proprietary new small molecule drug candidates, in collaboration with contract drug development service companies. VistaGen plans to have economic participation rights to each and every drug it develops, which should benefit its bottom line as well as its shareholders.

For additional information, visit www.VistaGen.com