Aastrom Biosciences Inc has entered into a collaborative agreement with Stanford University (Stanford) for a new therapeutic approach for cancer therapy. The collaboration will combine Aastrom's patented single-pass perfusion (SPP) cell production technology with Stanford's Cytokine Induced Killer (CIK) cell technology to produce cells designed to trigger an immune system attack on a patient's tumor cells.

CIK cells are a subset of the immune system's T-lymphocytes. When grown in culture using cytokines and an activating antibody, the cultured CIK cells have the ability to destroy tumor cells. A clinical study to evaluate the use of CIK cells in patients with Hodgkin's disease and other cancers will be conducted at the Stanford University Medical Center under the direction of Robert Negrin, Director, Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation.

Dr. Negrin has published extensively on CIK cells and their anti-tumor activity, and has approved clinical protocols for the investigation of CIK cells in the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma and other cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma. Unlike conventional treatments, such as chemotherapy, the use of CIK cells may provide a tumor-specific, relatively non-toxic approach to treating cancer by triggering a natural immune system response against the cancer. The same approach may be used to treat many types of cancers and to augment the results after all types of hematopoietic stem cell transplants.

The ability to produce highly functional and reliable human cells for therapeutic use is Aastrom's specialty. For this study, Aastrom's patented SPP process, along with components of its AastromReplicell System platform, will be used to enable the ex vivo production of the CIK cells under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) conditions. This project complements Aastrom's ongoing activities utilizing this same technology for the production of dendritic cell cancer vaccines, another form of immunotherapy. The Company previously announced its collaboration in the dendritic cell vaccine area with Dr. Ronald Levy, also at Stanford. This study was reviewed in an article in the May 23, 2003 issue of the Wall Street Journal, on Page 1 of the Marketplace section.