Investors in ALung Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based biotech firm, will direct $2.5 million towards overseas clinical trials of a ventilator replacement device. The Hemolung System, developed following artificial lung research at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1990s, inserts a small catheter in the patient’s jugular or femoral vein to remove carbon dioxide and deliver oxygen. The device is similar to methods in use for kidney dialysis, replacing the need for intubation and mechanical ventilation in current ventilation systems. The patient can talk, eat, and avoid sedation, while giving the lungs the opportunity to heal.

The cost savings of a better respiratory device are huge. By reducing ICU costs and the risk of ventilator acquired pneumonia (VAP), a common risk of intubation, Hemolung offers a radical new therapy that can obviate the treatment costs of VAP, estimated at $125,000 per incident. 

"We’ll run the first in-human trials with five to ten patients in India within the next couple of weeks," says company chairman and CEO Pete DeComo. "Our team is in India as we speak. Following that, we’ll have a pilot trial beginning in November, with 20 patients in five hospitals in Germany, tracked by the same team."

DeComo says that ALung will bring the data from the overseas trials back to the U.S. for an FDA trial on the device in the second half of 2010. That larger trial will include Pittsburgh as one of ten locations nationwide.

Source: Pete DeComo, ALung Technologies
Writer: Chris O’Toole