What is equicent™ CTM?
Advancing Equine Health
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equicent™ CTM is an injectable allograft derived from fetal equine umbilical cord tissue developed by Equine Performance Labs in Austin, TX.
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Leveraging the proven qualities of human-derived Wharton's jelly, we tailor each application to align with the horse's innate structural integrity for optimal homologous tissue repair.
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Backed by comprehensive research and unbiased testing, equicent™ CTM delivers scaffolding and growth proteins that support tissue repair and replacement.
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Sourced exclusively from champion bloodline mares post-full-term births, EPL prioritizes the safety and well-being of both mare and foal, with minimal to no adverse reactions upon application.
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Engineered for horse comfort, equicent™ CTM enables non-invasive, precise application at the injury site, providing a premium and innovative solution for equine care.
Elevating Equine Performance with equicent™ CTM
Horse First, Sport Second
Developed by equine enthusiasts with a passion for horse health, equicent™ CTM leverages proven science from Wharton's jelly in fetal umbilical cord tissue to enhance equine mobility health through connective tissue supplementation. Prioritizing horse comfort, this ethically sourced, natural allograft enables precise on-site application, optimizing the repair of soft tissue conditions within joints and ligaments.
What Sets Us Apart
equicent™ CTM leverages the unique properties of Wharton's jelly, which is inherently designed to withstand compressive and torsional forces on the fetal umbilical cord. Unlike traditional amniotic membrane and fluid products on the market, equicent™ CTM is meticulously dissected to preserve protein-rich dense tissue sourced from outside the vessels and arteries.
At Equine Performance Labs, we maintain a dedicated tissue bank staffed with specialized personnel, ensuring all processing is conducted in-house. This rigorous, closed-loop approach ensures unmatched quality and transparency, setting us apart from other equine tissue companies that often produce products alongside human tissue operations or partner with external manufacturers or clean rooms.
Transforming Equine Care
Leveraging the proven benefits of human-derived Wharton's jelly and supported by extensive scientific data, EPL paves the way for the equine market to receive the same high-quality care and innovation.
Uncompromising Quality & Science
Each product undergoes stringent quality control testing to confirm sterility, absence of endotoxins, and consistent product quality, ensuring safety and reliability at every step.
Practical and Targeted Application
equicent™ CTM is designed for targeted use in the equine field, with a rapid thawing time that allows for convenient, precise, and direct application to affected soft tissue defects.
Unlocking the Science Behind equicent™ CTM
Strong Product Characterization in Advanced Proteomic Analysis
The transformative potential of equicent™ CTM is validated by mass spectrometry-based proteomics, revealing a consistent and potent protein profile. This analysis demonstrates a rich concentration of structural proteins, protective molecules, and growth-promoting factors—essential elements for connective tissue repair and regeneration.
By enhancing tissue repair and preserving extracellular matrix integrity, equicent™ CTM sets a new standard as a connective tissue allograft, providing exceptional support for equine joint and ligament health. Equip your equine patients with the advanced care they deserve. Click here to review our Proteomics Abstract.
Non-Invasive
The non-invasive, ready-to-use formulation allows for easy, precise and straightforward administration
Umbilical Cord
The first fresh tissue allograft featuring the inherent structural elements of the umbilical cord along with protein-rich dense tissue and live cells
State-of-the-Art Processing
Our meticulous tissue dissection preserves native factors and various proteins, distinguishing equicent™ CTM from existing product solutions
Natural
Our cryopreservation process helps maintain the natural benefits of the allograft, which are analogous to joint and ligament tissue supplementation
Single Source Donor Herd
Ethically sourced tissue is collected following full-term, natural delivery, ensuring no harm comes to the mare or foal
Partner with EPL:
Elevate Equine Care Today
Ready to redefine how you approach equine health? equicent™ CTM is the ultimate solution for soft tissue and cartilage repair, trusted by veterinarians for its groundbreaking science and proven clinical results. Whether you're treating lameness or optimizing joint health, equicent™ CTM is here to elevate your practice and your patients' outcomes.
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Founded in 2008 by Keith and Ginger Myers, Coteau Grove Farms breeds Louisiana-bred racehorses competing nationwide. With champions like The Great One, No Parole, and Touchuponaster, and a continuous infusion of new bloodlines, the farm proudly produces graded stakes winners.
About Coteau Grove
Consistently setting new standards in the Kentucky sales ring with record-breaking transactions, including a remarkable $575,000 sale, while elevating yearlings to top career trainers.
Kentucky Sales
CGF breeding program showcases only the finest bloodline mares paired with elite stallions, including Authentic, Flightline, Star Guitar, California Chrome, No Parole, and more. This commitment to excellence produces offspring and mares that consistently dominate the Louisiana Champions Awards, including the prestigious Horse of the Year title.
Breeding Programs
Coteau Grove Farms’ horses have earned over $5 million, with standout earners like The Great One ($731,290) and No Parole ($369,866). In 2023, the farm received $366,116 in breeder awards, highlighting its legacy of producing top-tier champions. Check out their news and events.
Champion Bloodlines
Exclusive Sourcing Partner
Coteau Grove Farms
Transform Equine Care at Your Practice
Discover how equicent™ CTM can elevate your equine health solutions and deliver unmatched outcomes for your patients. With its cutting-edge regenerative properties, ease of use, and proven safety, equicent™ CTM empowers veterinarians to optimize natural recovery and performance in horses.
About Wharton's Jelly
Wharton's Jelly (WJ), a substance found within the umbilical cord, has been recognized for centuries and is now at the forefront of regenerative medicine. Its unique composition, rich in growth factors and structural proteins, offers significant therapeutic potential for treating various musculoskeletal conditions.[make this universal and less horse and tie in...your horse gets same treatment as humans do, tie in
Rigorously Tested for Safety and Comfort
A comprehensive safety study, conducted under stringent conditions, confirmed the safety of equicent™ CTM when applied directly to the site of the soft tissue defect to supplement ligament and joint health. The study showed excellent results, key findings include:
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No significant pain, lameness, or adverse events observed post-administration.
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A transient, expected synovitis resolved within five days.
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No adverse events or measurable immune reactions, even after repeated dosing.
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No lameness or pain induced by the injection, and horses remained comfortable throughout the study.
A Complete Solution for Equine Health
equicent™ CTM is thoughtfully developed to support key aspects of equine regenerative care. With its extracellular matrix scaffolding designed to aid in tissue repair, live cells, and a composition rich in growth factors and cytokines, equicent™ CTM offers a comprehensive approach to enhancing regenerative outcomes in equine health.
Join Our Case Study Series
Be part of an exclusive nationwide case series with Equine Performance Labs. Help shape the future of equine health and innovation.
Exciting news!
Dedicated to the Highest Standards of Quality and Transparency
At Equine Performance Labs, we uphold the highest standards in the processing and testing of equicent™ CTM to ensure the safety and reliability of our product. Here’s how we ensure quality at every step:
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Regulatory Compliance
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State-of-the-Art Facilities
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Ethical Sourcing
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Experienced Team
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Comprehensive Donor Screening
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Third-Party Validated Product Testing
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Quality Certificates
FAQs
Wharton’s jelly is a protective connective tissue matrix found in the umbilical cord of all mammals, including horses. It surrounds the blood vessels within the cord, serving to protect, insulate, and cushion them.
Wharton's jelly offers a unique set of potential benefits for tissue repair and regeneration, particularly in musculoskeletal applications. Rich in essential extracellular matrix components like collagens, proteoglycans, and hyaluronic acid, as well as cytokines and growth factors, it closely mirrors the structural characteristics of musculoskeletal soft tissues. The composition of Wharton's jelly supports vigorous cellular activities, enhances the potential for cell differentiation, and promotes cellular migration into various soft tissues, making it particularly effective in supplementing soft tissue repair.
Furthermore, Wharton's jelly's immune-privileged properties and non-invasive collection from healthy umbilical cords minimize the risk of adverse reactions. These properties, combined with its ability to support cellular migration and tissue regeneration, position Wharton's jelly as an ideal biomaterial to support regenerative processes.
Recent research has significantly advanced our understanding of Wharton's jelly (WJ), particularly regarding its potential clinical applications. Initially, WJ's benefits were primarily attributed to its living cells. However, emerging studies indicate that the connective tissue matrix (CTM) within WJ plays a crucial role in supplementing tissue repair, independent of cell viability. This CTM serves as a natural scaffold, delivers essential growth factors and chemokines, while providing a unique biomechanical microarchitecture. This structure is designed to support the formation of collagen-rich tissue, which may be particularly advantageous in the repair of tissues with collagen deficits. These insights suggest that the acellular components of WJ can be effectively utilized in regenerative medicine, offering a paradigm shift in how WJ-based therapies are developed and applied.
equicent™ CTM is carefully processed to retain the essential characteristics of the connective tissue matrix found in the equine umbilical cord and is cryopreserved to safeguard the beneficial components of Wharton’s jelly. This innovative, first-of-its-kind product is provided as a frozen tissue suspension.
equicent™ CTM is administered by licensed veterinarians via targeted injections directly into affected joints, tendons, or ligaments, ensuring precise delivery of the protein-rich allograft to the defect site. Its adaptable, ready-to-use formulation requires a simple, one-step procedure—eliminating the need for additional tissue harvests—while its rapid thawing time makes it ideally suited for field applications, promoting maximum comfort and convenience for the horse and veterinarian.
Yes, equicent™ CTM has been evaluated in controlled, blinded studies, and it has consistently demonstrated safety for use when applied directly to injuries within equine joints, tendons and ligaments. In these studies, horses exhibited no significant pain, lameness, or systemic adverse events over a 42‐day period—with only a transient, mild synovitis that resolved within days, which is typical for intra-articular injections. Ethically sourced and manufactured to maintain a consistent protein profile across donors, equicent™ CTM meets high quality and safety standards for clinical use in horses.
While equicent™ CTM has shown a strong safety profile in our safety studies, as with any allograft-based therapy, there remains a possibility that it may not improve the horse’s condition as expected, and there is a potential risk of adverse reactions. These risks, which can vary between individual cases, are not fully exhaustive. It is important to have a detailed discussion with your veterinarian about the specific potential risks and benefits in your horse’s situation. For a complete list of risks and detailed instructions for use, please refer to the product package insert.
equicent™ CTM targets the root cause of soft tissue conditions by delivering a naturally derived, protein-rich allograft directly to the site of injury, supplementing true tissue repair rather than merely masking symptoms. Safety studies show only a transient, mild synovitis with no lasting adverse effects, while proteomic analyses confirm a robust, consistent profile of key extracellular matrix proteins and growth factors essential for restoring tissue structure and function.
equicent™ CTM supports soft tissue repair by delivering a biologically active, collagen-rich extracellular matrix directly to injured areas. Derived from cryopreserved equine umbilical cord tissue, it serves as a natural bioscaffold, providing essential growth factors and anti-inflammatory proteins that help support damaged tendons, ligaments, and joints. By supplementing the native extracellular matrix, equicent™ CTM supports tissue regeneration, improves joint mobility, and enhances overall comfort, offering a targeted and long-lasting solution for equine soft tissue injuries.
equicent™ CTM distinguishes itself from other regenerative therapies by utilizing ethically sourced equine umbilical cord tissue. It retains a complete profile of protein-rich tissue, viable cells, and robust structural scaffolding—delivering benefits akin to those provided by Wharton’s jelly. Unlike amnion-based products that often undergo processes such as lyophilization, which can compromise tissue integrity, our proprietary processing ensures a consistent formulation that enhances joint mobility, supports tissue repair, and maximizes horse comfort. As the first fetal umbilical cord–derived product in the U.S. equine market, equicent™ CTM offers a novel, reliable, and biologically robust approach to regenerative care.
Cryopreservation is a process involving the addition of a chemical compound which preserves the native biological and structural integrity of cells and tissues during the freezing process. In most cases, cells and tissues are frozen at ultra-low temperatures which slows and/or stops the metabolic activity of cells and the decay process of tissues. In contrast, lyophilization—or freeze-drying—removes moisture from biological materials, a process that can compromise the materials’ natural architecture and alter its inherent properties.
equicent™ CTM is a specialized allograft derived from equine umbilical cord tissue, processed and cryopreserved using advanced techniques modeled after human tissue standards. This connective tissue matrix is designed to support and protect equine tissues. As it functions solely to supplement and protect tissues, equicent™ CTM is not classified as a New Animal Drug or a biologic product, exempting it from FDA premarket approval or USDA licensing requirements. Despite the absence of specific federal regulations for such equine products, Equine Performance Labs has voluntarily adopted stringent human tissue processing standards (Human Section 361, 21 CFR Part 1271). This commitment ensures that equicent™ CTM meets the highest quality and safety standards, providing horse owners with a product manufactured to human-grade specifications.
Yes, Section 361 products can contain live cells. The FDA explicitly recognizes that structural tissues, which can be regulated as Section 361 HCT/Ps, inherently contain cells. In their guidance, the FDA states: "FDA acknowledges that structural tissues contain cells." This acknowledgment confirms that the presence of cells, including live ones, in a tissue product does not automatically disqualify it from being regulated under Section 361, provided it meets other necessary criteria such as minimal manipulation and homologous use.
At EPL, our products are manufactured in advanced ISO Class 7 cleanrooms, where every piece of equipment is meticulously calibrated and validated to ensure consistently high-quality and reliable results.
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Homologous Use
Homologous use involves repairing, reconstructing, replacing, or supplementing a horse’s cells or tissues with a CTM that performs the same functions in the recipient as in the donor. As demonstrated by electron microscopy, Equine Performance Labs' processed Wharton’s jelly is structurally similar for connective tissue supplementation or transplantation in horses, showing similarities not only in articular cartilage but in other connective tissues throughout the horse's body.
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Improving Quality of Life
Connective tissue supplementation allows you to address issues at their source by injecting viable connective tissue directly into the site of breakdown or defect. The horse’s body can use the collagenic superstructure of transplanted Wharton’s jelly as building blocks to fill voids in cartilage and other soft tissues. This approach targets the root cause rather than just treating symptoms, providing equine patients with a chance for long-term improvement in their quality of life.
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Pain is a symptom indicating an underlying condition or injury.
Breakdown in connective tissue is often managed with opiates or steroids to relieve discomfort in horses. When experiencing pain, horses signal that something is wrong. Relying solely on these medications masks the issue instead of addressing the root cause.
What is a Connective Tissue Matrix?
Connective Tissue Supplementation is the practice of simply replacing missing or damaged tissue in the body with new, healthy, connective tissue. A Connective Tissue Matrix, or CTM, is a structural connective tissue allograft intended for homologous use in replacement or supplementing of missing or damaged tissue directly at the site of the structural defect.
Advantages of WJ
Wharton's Jelly (WJ) is rich in extracellular matrix components [citataion/haylee] including collagen types I, III, and V, elastin, fibronectin, hyaluronic acid, and various cytokines and growth factors. This unique composition, combined with its naturally "immune-privileged" nature, minimizes the risk of adverse reactions, making WJ an ideal biomaterial for supporting tissue repair and regeneration.
The Strength of WJ and ECM
Umbilical cord tissue is structurally similar to articular cartilage and other soft tissues in horses. Wharton’s jelly (WJ) contains many beneficial components for transplantation, with the extracellular matrix (ECM) being the most prominent. The ECM is a collagen-based, crosslinked network that provides tensile strength and load distribution, making it ideal for musculoskeletal injuries. WJ allografts are derived from equine umbilical cord tissue, disassociated, suspended in saline, and cryopreserved. They are designed to replace missing or damaged tissue directly at the defect or injured area, typically administered via syringe for ligament, muscle, or cartilage tears.
Shifts in Understanding of WJ
The understanding of Wharton's Jelly (WJ) has evolved. Initially considered a cellular product dependent on living cells, research now shows WJ's therapeutic effects are independent of cell viability. This extracellular matrix serves as a natural delivery system for vital growth factors and chemokines while offering a unique biomechanical microarchitecture to support collagen extracellular matrix formation, especially beneficial in areas of collagen deficiency.