Targeted Biology Tackles Tough Bone Healing: A Q&A with Jeffrey Frelick, Chief Executive Officer & President of Bone Biologics

My career spans over 25 years in medtech, split between operational roles in labs and sales and 15 years on Wall Street as an equity analyst covering the sector. That dual perspective shapes how I lead Bone Biologics. We are a clinical-stage company focused on orthobiologics for spinal fusion, addressing a critical gap in bone regeneration. Traditional bone grafts are passive scaffolds, meaning outcomes vary widely, especially in hard-to-heal patients like smokers, diabetics, and obese individuals. Our lead product, NB-1, utilizes a proprietary protein called NELL-1 that actively signals the body to form bone only where existing bone is present, minimizing the severe swelling and off-target bone growth seen with older biologics. We are currently running a 30-subject pilot study in Australia to support our FDA regulatory pathway toward a U.S. pivotal study.

Focus on solving one hard problem exceptionally well before beginning to scale. NELL-1 has potential applications across multi-billion-dollar markets in trauma and osteoporosis, but chasing every opportunity at once destroys operational discipline. We chose to start with spinal fusion because the spine is one of the most challenging biological environments in the body for bone to heal. If you can prove safety and efficacy in the hardest clinical cases, you create a validated foundation that naturally pulls your platform into broader indications.