A promising traumatic brain injury and stroke treatment company that spun out from Cleveland Clinic has shut down, with backers of the startup hoping the technology behind the business can be revived sometime later.
CSF Therapeutics was launched with lots of optimism and a $4 million venture capital investment four years ago. But the Clinic and others associated with the company now refer to the business as “on hiatus,” “hibernating” or “dormant.”
CSF currently has no operations and no employees, a Cleveland Clinic spokesman said.
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CSF’s device was designed to maintain blood flow to the brain in patients experiencing a buildup of excess cerebral spinal fluid due to trauma from a stroke or head injury. The company’s name represents an acronym for “cerebral spine fluid.”
“The launch of CSF Therapeutics presents a significant opportunity to develop new medical devices and therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases for which there have been limited treatment options to date,” Chris Coburn, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, said when CSF announced a $4 million investment from Boston-based Norwich Ventures.
Aaron Sandoski, a managing director with Norwich, declined comment about CSF and referred questions to the Clinic.
It’s not entirely clear what pushed the company into “hiatus,” but it’s a near certainty that data from CSF’s animal tests didn’t show what the company had hoped. When asked why the company was on hiatus, the Clinic spokesman said via email: “Board decided that additional proof of concept/research needed to be done prior to additional commercialization.”
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Testing of the device never progressed to humans, the Clinic spokesman said.
However, it would be premature to label the company as “dead.” The device was the brainchild of Dr. Mark Luciano, a neurological surgeon with the Clinic, and researcher Stephen Dombrowski. Cleveland Clinic still holds the intellectual property to the device, and it’s always possible that Luciano could revive the technology with additional research, perhaps via government funding.
Certainly, it’s no surprise when a young company fails — or in this case, goes on “hiatus.” Startups in general have high failure rates, and CSF, with such complex technology at such an early stage, was obviously a high-risk, high-reward venture.
