Sanguine Biosciences Opens New Apheresis Donor Center in Los Angeles
Sanguine Biosciences (Sanguine), a leader in connecting patients with biomedical researchers to accelerate precision medicine R&D, this week announced its opening of a blood donor center in Los Angeles. The center will specialize in collecting concentrated white blood cell biospecimens through apheresis (a.k.a. leukopaks) from participants in Sanguine’s Patient Community network. These research products facilitate advanced therapy development programs from discovery to manufacturing.
Human immune cells and stem cells increasingly represent critical components of therapeutic discovery and development, but their low abundance in circulation limits their availability for subsequent research. Selectively concentrating these cells in a single donation with specialized apheresis training and equipment provides scientists with a high-quality biospecimen that reduces donor variability and associated research timelines and costs. Furthermore, the leukopak specimen resembles the cell or gene therapy product that patients ultimately receive. Therefore, patients and healthy donors participating in a leukopak collection are pivotal to the future availability of life-changing therapies.
The donation center builds on Sanguine’s already popular disease-state leukopak offering, made possible through qualified apheresis facility partnerships. Adding a Sanguine-managed center permits healthy donor participation and increased patient capacity. “As our donor community grows to include over 70,000 individuals nationwide, we recognize that patients want to take control of their health and positively impact their care. Opening our first center of hopefully many enables Sanguine to achieve its mission of facilitating patient participation in the medical research process,” said Sanguine Co-Founder and CEO Brian Neman.
“The combined strengths of our research-ready Patient Community, patient engagement team who have tirelessly built relationships with patient advocacy groups, and procurement team who deliver to scientists what they need in terms of data and material to conduct cutting-edge research uniquely positions Sanguine to become the premier provider of leukopaks and other translational biospecimens to the biomedical community,” Neman added.
Centrally located in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles, the apheresis center was partly funded by BroadOak Capital’s investment announced earlier this year. “We looked at the market and saw the unmet supply for scientists’ high demand for healthy and disease-state leukopak products,” said newly appointed Sanguine board member Cyrus K. Mirsaidi, chairman of BioSelective Capital Investments. “Combined with the initial excitement from our donors over the apheresis program launched in 2022 and our growing capabilities as the premier partner for the biospecimen procurement needs of researchers, we foresee a high probability that conducting apheresis collections ourselves will be successful.”
Sanguine forecasts opening a second center in the Boston metropolitan in 2024. Similar to the Southern California facility, such a location would empower donors residing in the Northeast to participate and enable same-day delivery of specimens to the high concentration of Boston-area biomedical research teams.