Therapeutic hypothermia medical device company Life Core Technologies has received a $250,000 investment from state-backed economic development group JumpStart.
The funding is part of an anticipated $3 million series A investment for the Cleveland-area company, which will use the cash on clinical studies aimed at furthering adoption of its device, CEO Mike Burke told MedCity News last week.
Life Core’s device, the Excel Cerebral Cooling System, resembles a neck-immobilization collar and works via a proprietary chemical that can reach temperatures as low as -5 degrees Celsius within seconds of activation. The chemical allows the collar to cool blood that’s going to the brain, which induces mild hypothermia.
Cooling the brain helps reduce the chances of inflammation and injury to tissue once blood flow is restored to patients who’ve suffered from heart attack, stroke or traumatic brain injury.
“This is an easy-to-use, noninvasive, highly effective solution to help decrease the potential long-term neurologic damage these already life-threatening incidents can cause,” JumpStart’s Lee Poseidon said of the cooling system. (Disclosure: JumpStart is an investor in MedCity News’ parent company, MedCity Media.)
Emergency medical service departments from 86 municipalities are already using the cooling device, Burke said.
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.
