Cath Lab Digest

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OWM: Mr. Cycyota, please describe your education, training, and work experiences that have prepared you for your current position as CEO of AlloSource.
Tom Cycyota (TC): I have worked in the medical device and human tissue banking industry for nearly 30 years. Before joining AlloSource, I was the Vice President of Alternate Care Business with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Medical. In this board-level role at J&J, I led the company’s movement into markets outside of acute care hospitals for the whole family of J&J companies. In a prior position, I was the Worldwide Director of Marketing for Wound Management, which fueled my passion for helping patients with chronic wounds.

  Over the years, I have had many great mentors that instilled in me the importance of having a personal vision for leading and managing organizations. My unwavering direction is to operate with personal and corporate integrity and to do the right thing for people we serve. At AlloSource, we are committed to honoring our donors and their families, our donor communities, our customers and the recipients who receive our tissue.

OWM: What should our readers know first and foremost about AlloSource?
TC: AlloSource, a non-profit organization, was founded 16 years ago and has grown into one of the largest tissue networks in the country with more than 350 employees. AlloSource is recognized by the medical community for its ability to process and provide high-quality tissue. We provide skin and musculoskeletal tissue allografts for use in chronic wounds, burns, spine surgery, tendon replacement, and limb salvage. AlloSource is one of the leading innovators in maximizing tissue donation, with the goal of offering optimal solutions for healthcare providers and their patients. We have partnered with our orthopedic surgeon customers to create the world’s largest fresh articular cartilage allograft program, which promotes joint restoration to help people regain mobility after trauma or diseases. AlloSource has a sophisticated research and development team that includes scientists who have developed a way to recover live mesenchymal stem cells from cadaveric adipose tissue. We have also developed a process to utilize amnion from birth tissue into a unique wound covering. Most recently, AlloSource has introduced AlloSkin™, an allograft skin substitute for use in chronic wounds. We now are partnering with the wound care medical community in expanding our tissue portfolio to help chronic wounds.

OWM: How were you first introduced to the arena of wound care/allograft and why do you enjoy working in this arena?
TC: One of the most extraordinary life-saving gifts of tissue-donation is providing skin for burn patients. Tissue donation is considered the gold standard in the treatment of third-degree burns. AlloSource began distributing cadaveric skin for acute burn care in 2006. We have seen the enormous impact of the use of AlloSource’s skin on burn patients, including severely burned patients from the 2010 Haitian earthquake, a sugar refinery explosion in 2008 in Savannah, Georgia, and multiple other events. As a company, AlloSource derives a high degree of satisfaction knowing our work can benefit so many critically injured patients. Our donor families are so appreciative that their loved ones have contributed their tissue for such a significant benefit.

  Allograft skin has always been at the heart of our wound care business; we were pleased when our customers started to ask for variations of our burn skin for chronic wound care applications. We modified the skin for wound care, meshed it, and created new sizes applicable for use in wound care. We introduced AlloSource’s first generation of products for wound care with AlloSkin, a partial-thickness, meshed, cryopreserved allograft skin. We believe we can play a substantive role in treating challenging and hard-to-treat wounds with standard treatment options. With the exponential rise in diseases like diabetes and peripheral arterial disease, we would like to contribute our expertise to help patients at risk for wound care complications. Providing life-saving and life-enhancing tissue is at the core of our mission. We believe, going forward, that our current and future products can contribute to the well being of wound care patients.

OWM: What are some of the company’s biggest accomplishments thus far? What are some of your key products and/or functions that clearly distinguish your brand?

  1. AlloStem: This past year, AlloSource developed and introduced a live mesenchymal stem cell tissue product recovered from cadaveric adipose tissue and combined with cadaveric bone called AlloStem® Bone Growth Substitute. AlloStem contains all of the biological components necessary for bone formation. It has osteogenic, osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties and eliminates the need for recovery of autologous bone, which could result in donor site pain and infections. AlloStem is currently available for routine clinical use and is also in several post-market clinical trials to assess its effectiveness in bone growth and healing. Initial results show solid evidence of bridging bone formation.

  2. Nationwide Burn Skin Commitment: As mentioned previously, AlloSource took extraordinary measures to ensure that allograft skin was available at burn units treating victims of severe burn disasters in the last several years. In 2010, we processed 50% more skin donors than in 2009 and greatly increased the amount of burn skin we were able to send to burn units nationwide. AlloSource has become a trusted source of high-quality grafts for burn surgeons both domestically and internationally. We are pleased that we can offer our allograft skin expertise to expand distribution into the chronic wound care market.

  3. Awards and Recognition: In the last few years, AlloSource received several important distinctions, recognizing leadership and contributions to the community. These include being named Colorado’s Top Healthcare Company in 2010 by ColoradoBiz magazine, Healthcare Innovator of the Year in 2008 by the Denver Business Journal¸ Large Company of the Year in 2008 by the City of Centennial, and finalist multiple times for both the Samaritan Institute Award given by the Colorado Ethics In Business Alliance and the Best Companies to Work For in Colorado presented by the Colorado Society for Human Resources Management.

OWM: Please describe the mission/vision of your allograft/tissue division.
TC: We are a mission driven company, which means that everything we do gets held up against our mission. Honoring donors is the first part of that mission and it is integral in everything that we do. We credit our mission-driven approach as being the catalyst for our long-term business success.

OWM: How does your personal vision fit with the company’s goals?
TC: My personal vision is to help other people. That is what we do every day at AlloSource. Having a strong personal mission and an equally strong corporate mission allows us to make the right decisions that will help the most people with the incredible donation that we receive.

OWM: Please explain what must take place on a daily basis at AlloSource in order to accommodate patients, clinicians, and healthcare facilities.
TC: Quality and service is what AlloSource focuses on every day. I have countless stories of the heroic length our people go to get tissues to our communities: chartering jets to deliver allografts during an ice storm, mobilizing our entire network to get burn skin to the victims of the Georgia sugar plant explosion, searching the country for a bone graft small enough for a 5-year-old girl so she could avoid amputation. On a daily basis, we make sure our surgeon and nurse partners have the right grafts to save and enhance lives. Our customer satisfaction scores average 9.5 and above on a scale of 1-10 every year. I am very proud of that and I think it speaks for AlloSource’s service and commitment.

OWM: Can you offer any words of wisdom to young people looking to strategically advance in the non-profit business world? Also, how do you measure success?
TC: Figure out your own personal mission and then find something professionally that works for you and fits into your mission. If you don’t, you will end up unhappy and your potential will be unfulfilled.

OWM: Looking ahead, what are some incentives or products the company is working on?
TC: AlloSource is launching two new tissue products for wound care. As we listened to clinicians’ concerns in the outpatient wound care center, we heard an important unmet need for a sterile tissue graft that can be stored at room temperature, is designed to be used in the out-patient clinical setting, and has superior handling characteristics compared to other currently available allografts. In response to this clinical demand, we are excited to launch AlloSkin RT, a tissue product that does not require storage in a freezer to meet this need.

This article was not subject to the Ostomy Wound Management peer-review process.