WHY PLATELTEX

FROM A PERSONAL HISTORY TO A LOW-COST FIENDLY-USE CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY TARGETED TO PEOPLE NEEDING

THE VERY BEGINNING A HISTORY OF PERSONAL SUFFERING AND REASONS FOR HOPE
Years ago my beloved father was bedridden and developed severe pressure ulcers. He was in Spain. His age and condition recommended absolute rest. I consulted many, many doctors all over the world. Their answers were always almost the same: " Your father is much too sick and old, let it be, you cannot fight against Nature.."Anyway, my stubborn character pushed me not to give up and, finally, I had the chance to meet a young biologist from an Italian city-hospital who had started working with platelet gel, making it feasible in a very simple way. Together with some of her Italian medical doctors they were challenging that gel to diabetic ulcerations with good preliminary results. Remarkably, at that time (1999) there was no experience to heal pressure ulcers with platelet gel. Nevertheless, with great courage and initiative, she decided to accept the challenge and few days later she was on plane with me, with her small old centrifuge and some vials of batroxobin!.... I cannot forget the deriding, mocking attitude of the local doctors when they saw us entering in my father room, even if I sincerely thank them for let us trying to do something that they were probably considering like an insane attempt. It can only be imagined their astonishment, and anyway that of all of us, when only 24 hour after the first application the horrible ulcers of my poor father, the first time after months, were already looking much better!!!

I am a business man, nothing to do with medicine, doctors and so on. Nevertheless, I was so much impressed by the favourable outcome and by reduced suffering at my beloved father’s end of life that swear myself that I had to do my best and put resources to bring platelet gel available for as many suffering peoples as possible. PLATELTEX was born in my mind.

BIRTH OF A SIMPLE IDEA
Since long hematologists and cell biologists have been knowing that platelets contain a variety of growth and developing factors. These are delivered at the lesion site upon platelet activation. Platelet activation takes place immediately after the lesion has occurred by means of thrombin and tissue-derived factors. In late nineties the pivotal work of Robert Marx (from the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Miami) and other concurrent clinical evidences were making it evident that platelets could be used locally to accelerate or to induce tissue healing. Remarkably, to be applied topically platelets would be embedded in a semisolid moiety.
Since decades, batroxobin was used as an in-vitro reagent to measure the in-vitro clotting time by converting plasma fibrinogen in fibrin. Batroxobin formulations also existed to be used as a local haemostatic drug in human.
The simple idea was to activate the platelet-rich plasma with batroxobin, thus obtaining in very few minutes a malleable clot of platelet-rich product to be applied to the lesion. This idea was patented (Cristina Sacchi et al., Patent N. W001/04378)

WHY BATROXOBIN
Plateltex proprietary process, batroxobin-induced gelation of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) is unique and exclusive
For clot formation fibrinogen must be converted in fibrin which then polymerizes forming a three-dimension adhesive mesh. The naturally occurring enzyme which converts fibrinogen in fibrin is thrombin. Thrombin is also a strong platelet-activating agent. Following activation platelets release their factor content in the surrounding environment, leading to a portion of growth factors to be wasted, thus becoming unavailable for tissue repair. 
On the contrary, compared to thrombin, batroxobin converts fibrinogen in fibrin in a slight different enzymatic way which does not activate platelets. Hence virtually no growth factor is lost into the environment during the Gel preparation. These factors are then made available for the tissue to be healed more slowly and progressively as platelets become activated or during their break-down during time.

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SHARING THE BENEFITS OF BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE HEALING BIOLOGICALS
The very satisfactory clinical outcome reported at the beginning of this chapter leaded the involved people to arrange a system for physicians and patients to achieve similar satisfactory results through a friendly-use disposable to prepare platelet gel from a small blood sample of the patients (autologous). Every effort was made also to arrange low-priced disposables in order to make the platelet-gel treatment economically accessible to a number of patients as large as possible. This is the why and how PLATELTEX was conceive and brought to life.