A New Jersey serial entrepreneur is throwing his hat into the hypertension treatment ring with a catheter to reduce high blood pressure that would rival Medtronic’s (NYSE:MDT) Symplicity Catheter System acquired by the Minnesota medical device giant last year.
The company, led by David Fischell and his brother, Tim, called Ablative Solutions Inc., has raised a little more than one-third of a target $2.5 million in a series A financing round for the medical device, according to a Form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fischell is also the CEO of Angel Medical Systems, among other companies. He is the son of Robert Fischell, a scientist and engineer with more than 200 patents, many of them for medical devices.
A patent was filed for the catheter system last year and preclinical animal studies are scheduled to begin this summer, Fischell told MedCity News.
Fischell said Ablative’s catheter design would make the procedure, referred to as renal denervation, cheaper and more efficient. The procedure involves damaging or killing the sympathetic nerves in the kidneys to reduce blood pressure.
Medtronic acquired the Symplicity catheter through its $800 million acquisition of Ardian in a deal that closed in January 2011. In July, it got approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to carry out a study design for the catheter.
Before Medtronic acquired it, a randomized clinical trial of 106 patients showed that the patients treated with Ardian’s device experienced an average drop in blood pressure of 32/12 mmHg after six months compared with an increase in blood pressure of 1/0mmHg in the control group of patients treated solely with medical therapy.
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 market value for a catheter to reduce high blood pressure is estimated in the billions of dollars, since roughly 65 million Americans suffer from hypertension.
