ReGenerative Medicine CEO says organization needed city’s help

The province’s lengthy approval process forced Lake Superior Centre for ReGenerative Medicine to get financial help from the city, says the company’s CEO.

City Council agreed during Monday night’s meeting at city hall to provide an emergency $500,000 grant to help prevent the struggling not-for-profit organization from going bankrupt. Officials with the organization say they could oversee the harvesting of as many as 200 donors a year for bone and tissue, which gives them a potential to make millions of dollars.

But the process to register and certify the organization took three years. The province eventually approved the company as a tissue and bone bank, but it took longer than expected.

ReGenerative Medicine Interim CEO Bob Thayer said the company almost paid the price for the province’s lengthy approval process.

“We were victims, quite frankly, of a very slow and lengthy process,” Thayer said on Tuesday.

“When you’re dealing with governments, sometimes they can move reasonably quickly and other times they move very slowly. It took two-and-a-half years to get our designation.

“Two-and-a-half years of dealing with the Ministry of Health. We built this facility in 2007. If we received our designation earlier, in a timely fashion, we wouldn’t have had an issue.”

The organization anticipated in its business plan that ReGenerative Medicine would be up and running around February. Instead the company had to wait until May when they had reached an agreement with the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre in order to have access to donor tissue.

Thayer said since the approval hadn’t happened yet, they weren’t bringing in any money to cover the costs of daily operations.

While the province has provided grants in the past, Thayer said they had to go to the city for help because the province doesn’t provide assistance for operational costs.

Thayer added that with the help that the city provided, they could become self-sustainable in about a year.

“Our business plan depends on recovering donors,” he said. “We take the donors bones and tissues and we engineer them for surgeons. Once we process that bone, it is distributed across Ontario. Because we didn’t have donors in a timely fashion cash flow was becoming a problem.”

The organization provides tissue to about 25 hospitals and dentists across Ontario.
MPP Michael Gravelle (Lib., Thunder Bay – Superior North) said he understood that there were some short-term issues and was glad that city council could assist ReGenerative Medicine.

“I was very pleased to see city council continue to support ReGenerative Medicine,” Gravelle said.

“This is a very exciting venture for the City of Thunder Bay. I’m pleased that the provincial government was able to provide significant support to ReGenerative Medicine over the years, including having them designated as a tissue bank.

“That was truly the real challenge for a significant amount of time and we were able to be successful in that regard.”

He said once the company gets through its operating challenges it will be a positive addition to the city.