A Medical Device Daily

FlowCo (Indianapolis), developer of the LumenRecon device, reported that it recently received a $250,000 investment from BioCrossroads’ Indiana Seed Fund I, Indiana’s only targeted life sciences seed stage investment fund.

Ghassan Kassab, MD, the inventor of LumenRecon and founder and president of FlowCo said that the funding will enable the company to make a human-use prototype for clinical trials scheduled to take place by next summer. The company is currently preparing regulatory documents for the study.

The LumenRecon is a catheter-based device that uses electricity to size the cross-section of a blood vessel. Four very small electrical wires are mounted on the exterior of any standard catheter and inserted into the blood vessel. Electrical currents are sent to the electrodes which give the cardiologist a digital output of the measurement for the blood vessel’s cross-sectional area digitally in real-time.

Currently, the routine catheter used to deploy a stent does not have a precise method for determining exact placement or a definitive measurement of the circumference of the artery for stent sizing. Error in placement or sizing can lead to poor outcomes including higher rates of restenosis (re-closure) of vessels and increased risk of thrombosis.

The LumenRecon device can also be used to determine the exact size that a balloon should be inflated during stent insertion into the blood vessel (angioplasty). The LumenRecon, a balloon, and a collapsed stent are advanced toward the site and the balloon is then inflated to the correct size by using the digital measurement from the previous LumenRECON electrode readings. The stent stays in place, the balloon is deflated and the catheter is removed.

“BioCrossroads’ support and resources have been invaluable and their investment will enable us to get to the next level,” said Kassab. “The LumenRecon technology will be embedded into the devices that cardiologists and radiologists already use when doing catheterization procedures. This device provides doctors with a lumen map — an immediate, digital reading — to help them be more precise in the placement and sizing of stents. This should result in shorter, and safer procedures.”

Kassab holds the Thomas Linnemeier Guidant Endowed Chair of Biomedical Engineering and is professor of surgery, cellular and integrative physiology at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Kassab does research on vascular systems, coronary circulation and tissue remodeling.

FlowCo is focused on providing products to improve the flow of blood through the vascular system. Impedance technology (the use of electricity), on which the company is founded, provides a platform for the development of products that aid in sizing, diagnosis and treatment of diseased vessels.

In other financing news: Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS; Lafayette, Colorado), a developer of liquid crystal technologies and products, reported that it has closed its series A financing with Coherent Investments for an undisclosed sum.

The company said the proceeds will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of new products for rapidly emerging applications in the biotech, consumer electronics and government defense industries.

BNS said the maturation of this liquid crystal technology, along with the development of new opportunities in the medical, 3-D display, communications, security and surveillance industries, led it to seek an investment partner in order to capture a significant share of these markets.

BNS makes liquid crystal devices for optical computing, telecommunications, medical imaging, and research applications.