RepliCel Life Sciences Inc. announced it has received test results showing that cells injected through the DermaPrecise Injector maintained >99% viability. Innovacell, a cell therapy company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan with a manufacturing facility in Innsbruck, Austria, tested RepliCel's DermaPrecise Injection System to measure for loss of cells and/or cell viability when injected through the system. Study results showed consistent cell viability over 99% when cells were injected through the DermaPrecise Injection System.

Equally important as it relates to clinical practice, cells remained viable in the device for up to 90 minutes after which cells injected through the DermaPrecise Injector still maintained >98% viability with a simple pre-injection "rotation" of the injector wand to reverse any sedimentation. Alternative dermal injection systems are either manual - and thus inherently inconsistent - or involve injection forces which are harmful to cells. Traditional manual injection techniques do not control for injection variability in shear stress, depth, dose, speed, or injection force.

All these factors are known to influence cell viability and have a likely impact on clinical outcomes and yet, surprisingly, remain uncontrolled in many clinical cell therapy studies. The DermaPrecise is an electronically controlled dermal injector with highly precise, pre-fixed volume and depth parameters which dictate exact consistency of every injection. Additionally the DermaPreciseTM system is programmable to ensure injection delivery speed does not exceed the shear force harmful to cells after factoring in cell density, needle gauge, and patient tissue density.

Furthermore, the DermaPrecise injects cells while the needle is being withdrawn, leaving the cells behind in the channel created by the needle, thus additionally reducing the amount of stress imposed upon injected cells. Given the system's control over injection depth, the injection can be optimized to deliver cells where they need to be to have an optimal clinical effect. DermaPrecise thus assists product developers and clinicians in controlling for delivery variability as an influence on clinical outcome variability.

Study Design: RepliCel's non-bulbar dermal sheath (NBDS) cells (which form the basis of the Company's RCS-01 and RCS-01 products) were cultured and placed into a standard injection solution, injected through the DermaPrecise injector using the system's 9-needle consumable, cells were collected post-injection and stained, then processed through a flow cytometer to count the post-injection cell survival rate.