Paris-based Arterial Remodeling Technologies (ART) plans to reveal for the first time details of the design of its polymer-based biodegradable stent.
Company co-founder Dr. Antoine LaFont will also discuss data showing the company’s polylactic acid-based stents “can be overexpanded 25 percent without any problems” such as cracking, according to a statement from the company.
“We will debunk the myth that polymer-based stents are not optimal as a bioresorbable scaffold and validate that our bioresorbable stent represents disruptive technology,” said CEO Machiel van der Leest, who used the word “bioresorbable” in every sentence attributed to him in the statement, and apparently has a keen understanding of search engine optimization.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
ART’s stents were co-developed by Fred Cornhill, former chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s department of biomedical engineering, who worked with researchers at two French institutions to develop the device. Cleveland Clinic maintains an equity stake in the company.
Biodegradable, or as they’re sometimes called, “bioresorbable” stents, recently have become alluring to the medical device industry because of their promise to do their job and then dissolve. The devices could become “the next revolution,” Abbott Laboratories’ top device executive told Bloomberg News last year. Abbott and Boston Scientific are among the heavy-hitters working to develop their own versions of the device.
Bloomberg valued the annual stent market at $4 billion.
ART’s stents are made from polylactic acid, a type of resin made from corn that’s viewed by some as “the future of plastic in a post-petroleum world,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The company says its stents offer two main advantages over competing devices: faster and smoother bioresorption and crack-free expansion.
ART had raised a total of $17 million in venture capital, as of its most recent public statements on the topic about nine months ago. The company will make its announcements at Euro PCR 2011, a cardiologists’ conference.
