Texas device startup may come to Cleveland (whether it likes it or not)

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Greater Cleveland may add another health-care start up by default.

Novomedics (no Web site, just e-mail), a nascent medical device company from Houston, is a likely lock for the region. Co-founder Brent Bell is moving to the area along with his wife, Vera Moiseenkova-Bell, who was recently named assistant professor of pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University. He’ll move here permanently in September.

Novomedics’ thinks its device can provide a non-surgical approach to surgical tubal ligation. It heats the area around the Fallopian tubes and creates scar tissue to seal the passage and permanently block reproduction. Previous similar approaches used implants, Brent Bell said, but his approach does not.

The device also offers potential for treating varicose veins, atrial fibrillation, pregnancies that occur outside the uterus, and for helping women with markedly abnormal Fallopian tubes to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization, Bell said

The technology is licensed from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

One hangup — not surprisingly — is funding. Bell is awaiting word on a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant and is trying to raise as much as $4.9 million in private capital so he can work on the company full-time and push his device toward human trials. A couple of equity firms active in the Houston area are interested in the technology, which could keep the company there, Bell said.

The SBIR grant would fund long-term preclinical trials and clinical studies either at the University of Texas or in Cleveland, Bell said. The equity funding would be used to perfect the device manufacturing process, file for an investigational device exception with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and perform a 50-patient U.S. study to seek approval in the European Union.

Bell, who is currently assistant director in the Center for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas Medical Branch, is in town through Wednesday, connecting with the local medical industry before returning to Houston.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user RBerteig]