Vascular Magnetics, a startup, spawns out of Children’s Hospital
Vascular's treatment, displayed on the left, coats artery walls with iron-infused medicine nanoparticles (in red), compared to existing treatment on the right. By zooming, one can see only small red areas of medicine in existing treatment.
Updated Tue., July 19: Updated in response to comment from Woodward: “We don’t use a stent coated with medicine – we use a temporary, catheter-borne targeting device made of the superparamagnetic steel. In the magnetic field, this device develops gradients which force the drug-loaded nanoparticles into the arterial wall. The nanoparticles are delivered through the same catheter that carries the targeting device,” he wrote in an email.
Folks with Peripheral Artery Disease, a circulation disorder that affects more than 27 million older adults in North America and Europe, often have pain involved with simple tasks such as walking.
Stent-based solutions that treat the disease, which force open arteries and release medicines into the passageways to prevent reblockage, are only temporary. The treatments allow reblockage to occur in about 50 percent of cases after the first year.
But a startup company spun out of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says it has created a new system of treatment that does a better job, and might have a future in stem cell research.
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