Perrier never had what it took to be a champion racehorse. In the brutally competitive world of thoroughbred racing, where fractions of seconds and perfect proportions separate winners from also-rans, this horse simply didn't measure up.
"He was a failed racehorse," said Ben Noren, founder of CellDrop Biosciences, a University of Wyoming spinoff company developing next-generation stem cell therapies.
"As a foal, he weeded out because he just wasn't as big and strong as the other horses — didn't have the right body type," said Noren.
"His name is Perry. Short for Perrier, as in the drink," Noren explained, referring to the popular brand of sparkling water from France sold in an iconic green bottle.
If CellDrop's clinical trials go as planned, stem cells collected from Perrier will go into bottles as part of an injectable, regenerative therapy.
Along the way, Perrier has cooperated with researchers and surgical staff. He’s even found a new home.
Perry's Journey to Colorado
Natalie Lombard, a surgical technician at Colorado State University's Equine Research Center, knows Perry's story intimately.
The Quarter Horse arrived from Texas at CSU when he was just shy of 18 months old, coming through the horse auction network with American Quarter Horse Association papers to verify his age.
"He came in a little bit beat up," Lombard recalled. "He had a pretty nasty hock wound on his back leg. So he had gotten in some sort of tangle, trying to cross a fence or something.”
The team brought him in and worked to get him healthy again.
"He was with us for a couple weeks at least before we started Ben's study," Lombard said.
Once healed, Perry underwent his first bone marrow extraction at 18 months old, then waited six months at the facility for a second extraction at 24 months — the specific ages needed for the research.
Despite what he'd been through, Perry proved to have an exceptional temperament.
"He is a very sweet boy," Lombard said. "He has been super willing to do whatever we asked of him... He has been very understanding and very willing.”
After the second bone marrow draw, Lombard ended up purchasing Perry herself.
"I had sort of been in the market for a younger horse, and Perry seemed like a really nice guy," she explained.
Now he lives on her property in Loveland, Colo., where she's working to train him under saddle. Turns out, he’s never been ridden.
"He is just super up for any challenge that you put in front of him. Such willingness to just do whatever you ask him and do it in such a kind and respectful way,” she said.
By chance, by becoming part of CSU’s stable of research horses, Perry found a new home.
And it was a chance encounter Noren experienced at a Philadelphia bar that led him into the business of regenerative equine therapies.
"Shark Tank" Moment
The path to Perrier's new role began with a moment of entrepreneurial despair, with Noren blowing off steam over drinks during a medical conference in Philly.
Noren had just spent weeks trying to convince orthopedic surgeons to adopt his cell therapy technology for human knees, only to discover they had little interest in biological therapies — they were, as he learned, mechanics who took pride in full joint replacement surgeries.
"We were sitting at a bar, kind of commiserating, that nobody wanted this," Noren recalled about the frustrating time he spent trying to find customers for biotech therapies he wanted to develop.
"And the guy next to me sort of turns around and he's like, 'Hey, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. So I own racehorses. And if you could do that to my racehorses, I'd pay a lot of money for it."
That surprise comment led Noren to discover, "In the equestrian sphere, everybody uses cell therapy already, but they're not happy with the efficacy of them."
Performance horses, he learned, "Get hurt very frequently and then the owners lose a lot of money."
Noren and CellDrop spotted an opportunity to target painfully common equestrian injuries, Noren said, particularly those affecting the superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) and suspensory ligament.
These are supporting tissues for what Noren described as, "That weird little bend right before their hoof."
As part of a horse’s body, these structures have a big job.
"There's a ton of force that's applied to that when they run," Noren said. The result can be catastrophic: "They're constantly breaking them, and they get these like holes literally like a hole just appears in the tissue."
Enter Perrier and his stem cells.
"We needed a donor animal who was healthy and didn't have any issues," Noren said. "And we had a racehorse, which was probably as good as any."
The team "selected him just based on meeting all the criteria the FDA wants to see," Noren explained.
The process involved drawing bone marrow from Perrier and processing it into cells, which they then froze down using CellDrop's proprietary tri-phasic encapsulation process.
The harvest, said Noren, could help launch a significant business.
"We harvested enough for a minimum of $60 million in treatments," Noren noted, with each one-time treatment costing as much as $9,000. "So we've got a lot that are in our big liquid nitrogen tank right now."
As for Perrier aka Perry, "He's hanging out at one of the vet's ranches, so he is there kind of on deck in case we need him, but we think we have all of the cells we need from him."
How Therapy Works
CellDrop's approach addresses a critical need in equine medicine, according to Noren and his team, which zeroed in on the holes that develop when tendons and ligaments are injured.
"We put our product into the hole and the cells go to work and basically regenerate the tissue faster and in a more robust manner," Noren said. "It helps them get better, faster, and there's less chance of re-injury because there's more quality tissue there."
The key innovation lies in CellDrop's hydrogel-based encapsulation technology.
As advisor Bob Grieve told Cowboy State Daily, "What Ben's done and and colleagues is to take stem cells and then encase them with his proprietary copolymer so the donor cells remain alive and viable and secrete the soluble products. But they're all encased within this polymer."
Grieve and the CellDrop team present these as the key benefits: The encapsulation keeps the cells viable for long periods, allows therapeutic factors to leak through while preventing the immune system from recognizing and rejecting the foreign cells, and ensures the treatment stays localized at the injury site rather than scattering throughout the body.
This therapy built on Perrier's stem cells instead stampede to problem areas in a way Grieve described as "the holy grail" for regenerative veterinary medicine.
What used to be a belabored, multi-step process can now be completed with a single injection, according to CellDrop.
"It will start repairing almost immediately," said Grieve. "You could think days and weeks, not months and years."
"It's hard to overstate how important this technology could be for highly valuable performance horses," added Grieve, pointing to recent sales in the Western performance industry, including stallions like Third Edge, which sold in September for $5.6 million.
What that stranger told Noren in the bar remains true today.
"There will be a demand," Grieve confirmed. "They'll be a great demand by high-end horses. They're more valuable than ever."
Moving Forward
This stem cell therapy is moving through the approval process right now. CellDrop is currently working with research animals at CSU, but the next phase will be even more significant.
"Once you have data in that, you send it to the FDA and you ask them for permission to start running in client-owned animals," Noren explained. "And that is what you might consider a clinical trial in humans... Next we're going to go into client-owned animals."
If all goes as planned, then a variety of common horse injuries could get treated with a spritz of Perrier.
Contact David Madison at david@cowboystatedaily.com
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
