Using its implant platform called Optiflow, Bioconnect is pioneering surgical techniques that form precisely controlled connections throughout the body, enabling surgeons to optimize the connections by matching the specific needs of the patient with the clinical application. The technology is applicable to a wide range of procedures, but the company is focused for now on improving vascular access in hemodialysis patients.
We turn a labor-intensive, highly variable procedure into a very fast, reproducible template-based procedure where a first-year surgical resident can get the same result as an experienced vascular surgeon, says Dakin, who came to the Philadelphia area as an orthopedic sales rep after college and is on his fifth venture-backed early stage medical device company.
A recent National Institutes of Health-funded study found 60 percent of newly created access sites arent suitable for dialysis within five months, an extremely high failure rate because of the non-anatomical flow path created when a surgeon ties an artery and vein together. Once the backwater of medicine, this issue of more accurate access points has been brought to the forefront thanks to increased attention on end-stage renal disease and a challenge by the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services for new, more efficient technology.
We believe by putting an implant in there, which is more anatomical and delivers more symmetrical flow, that we can decrease those failure rates, says Dakin.
The company is a spin-out of Doylestowns Vasculab Technologies incubator in 2007 and in its first year secured $9 million in a round of Series A financing that helped the company produce the technology and begin its first-in-man studies in late 2008. The technology achieved a 90 percent success rate in 10 patients, and will undergo a large clinical study early this year in Europe. Dakin hopes data from the European study will lead to additional funding for sales and marketing.
Source: Adam Dakin, Bioconnect Systems
Writer: Joe Petrucci