Invivo Therapeutics' Chief Science Officer selected as recipient of 2011 Apple Award

InVivo Therapeutics (OTCBB: NVIV), a company focused on the development of groundbreaking technologies for the treatment of spinal cord injuries (SCI), today announced that Chief Science Officer Dr. Christopher Pritchard, Ph.D., has been selected as the 2011 recipient of the American Spinal Injury Association's (ASIA) prestigious Apple Award. The award recognizes excellence in publishing in spinal cord injury research across the globe.

“Establishing a model spinal cord injury in the African green monkey for the preclinical evaluation of biodegradable polymer scaffolds seeded with human neural stem cells.”

Dr. Pritchard and his InVivo Therapeutics team authored the article titled: "Establishing a model spinal cord injury in the African green monkey for the preclinical evaluation of biodegradable polymer scaffolds seeded with human neural stem cells." The article was published in 2010 in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods (188, 258-269). Co-authors are Jonathan R. Slotkin, Dou Yu, Haining Dai, Matthew S. Lawrence, Roderick T. Bronson, Francis M. Reynolds, Yang D. Teng, Eric J. Woodard, and Robert S. Langer.

"This award recognizes one of several landmark studies supporting our technology and our brilliant team of scientists led by our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Eric Woodard, and M.I.T.'s Dr. Robert S. Langer," said Frank Reynolds, CEO of InVivo Therapeutics. "Acknowledgement of this caliber is an honor and highlights the promise of our strategic initiatives. This study could not have been completed without the leadership from our Medical Director, Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, and our collaborator, Dr. Yang D. Teng, Director, Laboratories of Spinal Cord Injury and Neural Stem Cell Research at Harvard Medical School."

InVivo Therapeutics will receive The Apple Award from David F. Apple, Jr., M.D. on June 8, 2011, during the ASIA Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C. The award consists of a check for $2,000, a commissioned and engraved crystal apple sculpture, and the invitation to keynote the 2011 Research Day at Shepherd Center.

This is the fifth year that ASIA has presented The Apple Award, named in honor of Dr. Apple, founding member and past-president of ASIA. The award is a collaboration of three entities that have been critically important to Dr. Apple during his long career in orthopaedic surgery: Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where he served as founding medical director for 30 years; the journal Topics in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation, of which Dr. Apple is editor-in-chief; and ASIA.