The U.S. company Stem Cell Therapy International Inc. (SCII) announced today a reorganization and stock purchase agreement with S. Korea’s leading stem cell company, Histostem. The agreement marks the first step in the completion of a merger between the two companies.
Following a finalization of the agreement, the U.S. operations of Histostem will be managed by AmStem International, a wholly owned subsidiary of SCII.
As reported in initial filings with the S.E.C. (Securities and Exchange Commission), SCII will acquire 90% of the issued and outstanding shares of Histostem in consideration for the issuance of 72.5 million shares of Histostem stock.
According to David Stark, president and CEO of SCII, the company is in the process of securing supply channels in order to strengthen cash flow, which include a worldwide distribution of already existing stem cell facial cream and cosmetics products.
As stated in the press release, "Additional revenue is expected from the development of proprietary technologies from Dr. Han Hoon, CEO of Histostem, who will be working together with AmStemm to bring new products to the U.S. and E.U. markets."
This merger announcement was not unexpected but in fact was a required condition of a litigation settlement to which both companies had previously agreed and which had been announced on September 10th of this year. (Please see the related news article on this website, entitled, "U.S. and S. Korean Stem Cell Companies Announce Litigation Settlement", dated September 10, 2009).
Based in Tampa, Florida, SCII is a regenerative medicine company that is "devoted to the treatment of patients with stem cell transplantation therapy as well as providing the supplies of biological solutions containing new lines of stem cell products," as described on their website. As further described on the company’s website, SCII uses a type of adult stem cell procedure which they refer to simply as "stem cell transplantation (SCT)", which uses exclusively adult stem cells and which, as they explain, "is a surgical procedure that has been used successfully for 70+ years as a treatment of many diseases for which modern medicine has had no therapy, or in which state-of-the-art therapies stopped being effective. A documented 5 million patients have been so treated worldwide to date, evidenced by over 120,000 publications in MEDLINE (see www.nlm.nih.gov) amongst others. SCT is approved for use by the German authorities and the EU."
AmStem International, a wholly owned subsidiary of SCII, is based in Northern California where it specializes in "biotherapeutic and cosmetic stem cell products".
Founded in 2000 and based in Seoul, S. Korea, Histostem houses the largest repository of cord blood stem cells in the world, from which the company has already treated more than 500 patients. The company currently has 56 full-time employees and 28 part-time employees, and an intellectual property portfolio that consists of 5 patents that have already been granted and 6 patent applications that are still pending.