A Medical Device Daily

Canica Design (Almonte, Ontario) a research and development company, has been awarded its first U.S. patent in a series of comprehensive U.S. and international patents that it said "dramatically advance" the management and closure of wounds of all kinds.

The multinational patent portfolio covers Canica's clinical and surgical system and method for moving and stretching skin and muscle.

"The elegance of Canica's technology is its sheer simplicity. This patent and the soon-to-issue second U.S. patent are especially strong because of uncommonly rigorous examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office," said John Pratt, partner and chair of the intellectual property practice at Kilpatrick Stockton (Atlanta), who led the intellectual property team for Canica.

He added, "In light of the broad utility of the Canica system and the strength of the patent portfolio, I believe this intellectual property will prove to be of equal or greater patient benefit and commercial value than Wake Forest University's patents for negative pressure wound therapy."

A decade ago, wound management was revolutionized after the licensing of patents awarded to Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) researchers, which enabled the mass commercialization of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) and created what has grown to become a multi-billion-dollar market led thus far by Kinetic Concepts (San Antonio).

Leonard Lee, president of Canica, notes that like NPWT a decade ago, Canica's dynamic wound closure system is another classic business school study in disruptive technology. "It undermines the business model behind most current products that focus on the prolonged and laborious process of managing a wound while it heals. In comparison, dynamic wound closure focuses on rapidly closing the wound, leaving nothing to manage. This is certainly disruptive to all those companies whose profits are generated by the cumulative sales of wound management consumables."

Julia Barry, Canica's manager of clinical and regulatory affairs, sees a strong alliance between NPWT, the disruptor of a decade ago, and Canica's wound-closing innovations.

"In our clinical work, we often use negative pressure wound therapy in combination with our dynamic wound closure devices. The clinical experience has been uniformly a set of superior outcomes, and faster than either therapy used alone," she said.

"Dynamic wound closure deals with the mechanical wound state and NPWT manages the biological state, producing an optimal combination therapy for rapid reduction and closure of wounds, faster than ever before," Barry added. "The combined therapies simply produce superior results."

Founded in 1999, Canica is a design-focused medical company specializing in devices for rapid healing of soft-tissue trauma using its dynamic tension technology.

Canica grew from a surgical instrument company to one which develops a complete range of wound stabilization and closure devices that improve patient outcome by significantly reducing disfigurement, scarring, pain and the need for skin grafts and mesh repair, all while reducing costs.