Developed research and technology within the UC contributes to the foundation of many new companies.
Concentric Medical and NanoH2O are two of the many companies that have sprung up as a result of the research done at UCLA.
Concentric Medical
Thanks to Concentric Medical and its product, Merci Retriever, stroke patients can now seek more successful, less risky treatment.
Dr. Reza Jahan, an interventional neuroradiologist who was involved in the clinical trials for the Merci Retriever, said the device allows doctors to help patients suffering from ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain and impedes blood flow. The lack of blood flow to the brain damages the brain tissue near the blocked blood vessel.
Doctors use the Merci Retriever to remove the clots from the clogged blood vessels in the brain, Jahan said. After using a catheter to thread the device through the blood vessels, the interventional neuroradiologist inserts the device, which looks somewhat like a corkscrew, into the clot and pulls it out.
The company spun out of a license agreement made in 1999 relating to the retrieval technology developed by UCLA Doctors Pierre Gobin and J.P. Wensel, said Emily Loughran, UCLA director of licensing.
Clinical trials for the company’s clot-retrieving device, the Merci Retriever, began in 2000 at UCLA, said John Miller, vice president of research and development of Concentric Medical. The Food and Drug Administration approved the device in 2004, Miller added.
Since its introduction into the market, 250 hospitals across the United States have adopted the product and 10,000 patients have been treated, Miller said.
Before the invention of this removal device, doctors treated patients with ischemic stroke by infusing a drug into the clot to dissolve it, Jahan said. However, this treatment could cause bleeding into the damaged area of the brain and could only be administered within the first six hours after the onset of the stroke.
“(The device) has helped tremendously in reducing the number of bleeds we see when treating ischemic stroke patients,” Jahan added. “It also extended the window of treatment from six to eight hours.”
Miller said that though the first generation of the Merci Retrieval device only succeeded in extracting the blood clot and restoring blood flow in about 50 percent of cases, the third-generation Merci V-Series, which was released in summer of 2008, has a success of approximately 80 percent.
Though the device proves successful and has been adopted by most medical facilities capable of doing so, not every hospital can support and use the technology. Concentric Medical still faces the challenge of developing the market so that more patients can be treated, Miller said.
“(We are) now providing the treatment mechanism, but its up to hospitals and users to create infrastructure to facilitate increasing the amount of patients that can be treated,” he said.
NanoH2O
Water scarcity and quality affect individuals in nations worldwide. NanoH2O, a UCLA start-up company working to develop desalination technology, hopes it will be able to lessen the burden of water scarcity issues.
Current CEO Jeff Green said he and his colleague founded NanoH2O in 2005 after deciding to pursue reverse osmosis membrane technology to improve desalination techniques.
Earl Weinstein, the assistant director for license and business development, said the company grew out of license rights for patents for a technology developed in the UCLA School of Engineering.
Since the company’s founding in 2005, it has been located in the UCLA California Nanosystems Institute Building. The company’s desalination technology, which involves adding nanoparticles to polymer-based membranes, allows for the removal of salt and other pollutants from water and makes water more potable and drinkable, Green said.
“Desalinization is one of the major opportunities the world has to combat water scarcity,” Green said. He added that through its technique, NanoH2O will make the process less energy intensive, more efficient, and more cost effective.
Though NanoH2O’s technology has not yet broken into the commercial market, Green said the company expects to have its first commercial product by early 2010.
Weinstein said he believes NanoH2O’s technology will be important in upcoming years as water becomes an increasingly vital resource.
“Water is going to be the next oil,” Weinstein said. “It’s a fixed resource that is increasingly scarce, and there is the issue of supply and quality, especially in developing parts of world. Any technology that can be used to reclaim (polluted water) is going to make a huge impact on quality of life in developing world.”
Weinstein added that the new technology is especially exciting because there have been few recent breakthroughs in the field.
“The original desalinization technique was developed at UCLA,” Weinstein said. “We are hopeful that this (new technology) really represents a major step forward.”