Anika Receives the ACE Award for Cutting-Edge Innovation for Tactoset® Injectable Bone Substitute from the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine

BEDFORD, Mass., July 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANIK), a global joint preservation company focused on early intervention orthopedics, today announced that it has received the Accelerating the Cutting Edge (ACE) Award from the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) for Tactoset^® Injectable Bone Substitute for hardware augmentation. This award highlights the innovative nature of Tactoset, a calcium phosphate based, biocompatible bone graft substitute that incorporates Anika’s core hyaluronic acid (HA) technology, and its use to augment hardware and support bone fragments during surgical procedures. The HA component of Tactoset makes the product highly flowable, easily injectable and able to interdigitate trabecular bone architecture, such as insufficiency fractures, with overall improved handling characteristics compared to competitive products.  

“Bone quality is a critical factor when placing load bearing anchors in bone, and the area that the hardware is in or near is often weaker with inferior quality bone or insufficiency fractures. Fundamentally, shoulders, knees and other joints that require surgery are often associated with either osteoporotic bone and/or lower quality bone which significantly increases the potential for pain, hardware failure, and inferior patient outcomes,” says Dr. Misty Suri, MD from Ochsner Health in New Orleans.

Tactoset allows surgeons to address the concern for microfractures and bone quality in addition to supplementing fixation to augment the use of suture anchors and other hardware for repairs such as rotator cuff surgery in the shoulder and reconstructive surgery in the shoulder and knee.

“As a surgeon primarily treating shoulder injuries in a predominantly elderly region, bone quality in rotator cuff repair is a significant concern. We have found that augmentation of poor quality bone related to osteoporosis, cysts, or revision surgery with a calcium phosphate bone void filler helps to increase the pullout strength of our anchors,” says Dr. Christopher E. Baker, MD from The Florida Orthopaedic Institute in Tampa, Fl. “The use of Tactoset in these instances has become a real game changer, turning a complex problem into a routine operation, by simply augmenting poor quality bone with the percutaneous placement of hyaluronic enhanced calcium phosphate.”

The recognition from a prestigious sports medicine society such as AOSSM underscores the versatile nature and value of using Tactoset for augmentation in poor quality bone. When augmented with Tactoset, the pull-out strength of suture anchors was shown to increase two-fold¹ in an osteoporotic bone model compared to a suture anchor alone. A higher pull-out strength can help surgeons feel more confident in their soft tissue repairs, such as rotator cuff procedures, where there is inferior bone quality or bone voids that may otherwise complicate the procedure and negatively impact outcomes.

“Winning this award from the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine truly validates the benefits Tactoset brings to the sports medicine surgeon and the patients that they treat. Prior to this innovation, surgeons experiencing poor bone quality had to adjust their technique and/or insert larger hardware to try and provide a secure repair for their patients. Tactoset is a quick, simple, and highly effective solution that allows surgeons to augment the repair without requiring anchor repositioning or larger sizes,” says Steve Ek, Anika’s Vice President of Research and Development.

Anika first launched Tactoset in the fourth quarter of 2019 and received FDA 510(k) clearance for the augmentation of hardware in September, 2021.

_{1. Preclinical data on file. Results may not correlate to clinical performance.}

About Anika
Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANIK), is a global joint preservation company that creates and delivers meaningful advancements in early intervention orthopedic care. We partner with physicians to understand what they need most to treat their patients and we develop minimally invasive products that restore active living for people around the world. We are committed to leading in high opportunity spaces within orthopedics, including osteoarthritis pain management, regenerative solutions, soft tissue repair and bone preserving joint technologies. For more information, please visit www.anika.com.

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