We are developing a carefully selected portfolio of product development opportunities.  Athersys is committed to developing therapeutic products that we believe have best-in-class potential, meaning therapeutic candidates that have the potential to be safer, more effective products than the current standard of care or other products in development, and that may have other advantages, such as superior scalability or ease of administration. By applying our distinctive technologies and capabilities, and by utilizing a "fast follower" approach where possible to minimize development risk and costs, we believe that we can create substantial value while being very cost effective.

We are developing the MultiStem product platform for multiple disease indications in parallel.  We are utlizing a "master file" approach, whereby we are using a single product manufacturing platform to achieve consistency in product manufacturing, characterization, and validation, while pursuing multiple distinct pre-clinical and clinical development programs in parallel.  By using the master file approach, we are able to advance multiple MultiStem programs in parallel in a cost effective and efficient manner. 

In our pharmaceutical programs in the obesity and attentional/cognitive areas, we are learning both from our pre-clinical and clinical results, as well as from the results of more advanced programs that we benchmark against.  We regularly re-evaluate our programs by comparing them to the efforts and results of others, as we seek to establish best in class products.  This approach allows us to stage investment and development risk, as we seek to maximize shareholder value.