Start-Up News
Executive Summary
Noteworthy news from medtech start-ups, including MicroPhage's bacteriophage technology to identify drug-resistant bacteria, Healionics' technology for enhancing device biocompatability, and Gel Delivery Solutions' novel thermo-reversible drug delivery gel.
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Diabetes: CGM Goes Mainstream
Getting a breakthrough medical device from the drawing board into mainstream use is the primary goal of every manufacturer, but a variety of factors influences how quickly a device reaches that goal - if at all. Right now, that process is playing out in the diabetes market, where continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is moving closer to becoming a staple of effective diabetes treatment. The three companies that produce CGM devices - Medtronic, DexCom, and Abbott Laboratories - are very active in demonstrating the value of this technology, but other companies are stepping up in the market. Meanwhile, the focus on CGM is having an effect on other products, including insulin pumps.
Healionics Corp.
Device manufacturers looking to bolster the biocompatibility of their products can now turn to Healionics, a supplier of biomaterial scaffolds designed to improve the biointegration of percutaneous or fully implanted medical devices. The company's STAR technology is a synthetic, three-dimensional matrix, similar to a thin, porous sponge. Because this biomaterial has been precisely engineered with uniform pore sizes to the approximate size of a single cell, the company says that living tissue and new blood vessels actually grow and weave into these pores.
Eyeing the Hospital Market for Infectious Disease Diagnostics
Hospital-based diagnostics are a tough sell to VCs, partly because big companies dominate the central lab. The area of infectious disease is even more challenging because low-cost culture methods are difficult to displace and novel high-value biomarker content is rare. MRSA screening may be one area where the right factors are coming together to form an opportunity. In some other cases, the same attributes that make rapid tests appealing outside the hospital could help bring them inside.