Hope Biosciences Annual Report

Hope Biosciences Founder and CEO, Donna Chang.

2020 was a historic year in many regards. The global Coronavirus pandemic brought economies to a standstill, disrupted normal routines, and caused untold heartache and loss for millions. As the year draws to a close, it’s important for us at Hope Biosciences to reflect on the year by going over our work and the accomplishments we’ve made. As always, our clients, partners, and supporters were central to all of our efforts.

This was a landmark year for us at Hope. We established the Hope Biosciences Stem Cell Foundation, received FDA clearance for seven clinical trials, added 13 new team members, and produced over 88.4 billion stem cells for treatments. Many things needed to come together to accomplish this, chief among them were the dedicated efforts of our Manufacturing, Quality Control, and Clinical teams. When we rang in the new year 12 months ago, we could never have imagined the strides we would make as an organization in such a grueling period.

The first couple of months in 2020 saw a dramatic decline of activity across countless business and industries. Restaurants, night clubs, live music venues, hair salons, and everything in between were asked to shut down their normal functions as people everywhere went supermarket crazy; stocking up on everything they could get their hands on in preparation for these uncertain times. Despite the initial furious response to news of an impending pandemic, the actual concerns for health and well-being were justified. Back in March, almost no one anticipated that by year’s end we would have surpassed 300,000 American deaths to COVID-19 while rejoicing in the development and authorization of multiple vaccines for a virus that hadn’t even existed a year earlier.

Many of the years of our lives may blend and blur together, but not 2020. We were just as jolted as everyone else by the “new normal” that set in during the first couple of months of the year. We were staring into a tunnel of uncertainty for the work we had planned for the year; not knowing if we could even remain operational.

Do we send our team home indefinitely? Do we pause our clinical efforts on ALS, Alzheimer’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus and all other indications? If so, for how long?

But we also asked ourselves what proved to be the most important question: How can we be a part of the solution to this looming nightmare?

Members of the Hope Biosciences Manufacturing Team promoting the use of COVID-19 safety measures.

At Hope Bio, we’ve always looked at adversity as a reason to adapt and innovate. Our main purpose here is to challenge the established methods of treatment and health care by bringing the future within reach. There are truly great people doing incredible work to combat the horrible illnesses and conditions that continue to plague our communities, and we believe our work is a compliment to those efforts; born out of the belief that there must be more that can be done. We’ve always maintained that there are better and more natural ways to treat disease and injury, and throughout our time in operation, we’ve made amazing headway on that end.

In 2020, we successfully obtained 7 FDA approvals for clinical trials and Expanded Access and completed our first trial for Rheumatoid Arthritis. Clinical trials for COVID-19, ALS, Severe Osteoarthritis, and Chronic Pain were all approved. We also built a trusted list of 72 people who’ve banked their own or their newborn’s stem cells with us believing, as we do, that hope can stem from within in the very near future. If tragedy strikes, the best medicine the body knows is close at hand.

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