Reconstructive surgery to treat craniosynostosis at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Ostiio is a Philadelphia medical device startup that’s just a few months old but has big ambitions: improving the quality of life for children with craniofacial defects, such as craniosynostosis and defects in the midface or lower jaw.
The company was part of an entourage of technology entrepreneurs from Philadelphia through the Penn Center for Innovation and Amplify Philly at the SXSW conference in Austin this week.
Craniosynostosis is a condition in which one or more of the joints between an infant’s skull prematurely fuse before the brain is fully formed. The condition results in a misshapen head because the brain continues to grow, according to the Mayo Clinic’s website. It affects one in every 2,000 to 3,000 infants.
Ostiio was cofounded by Ari Wes, a medical student at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Dr. Jesse Taylor, a plastic surgeon at Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The startup is based at the Penn Center for Innovation. Wes talked about the company’s work in an interview with MedCity News.
The device Ostiio is developing is a magnetically driven, internal distractor with the goal of improving upon the design of these distractor devices used as part of a procedure called distraction osteogenesis. The reconstructive surgery increases the length of bones. When the bone is cut during surgery, a distractor device is implanted to pull two pieces of bone apart bit by bit so that new bone can grow in between.
External distractors are frequently used for this procedure currently. In these cases, after surgery, parents spend the next few weeks or months turning the distractor screws which protrude through the skin 1-2 millimeters per day, according to a description on Seattle Children’s website. The goal “is to keep tension on the wires and move the face bones apart. New bone then grows to fill in the gaps.”
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 hospital likened the level of pain to less than what children feel when they get braces to straighten their teeth. As someone who had braces, that pain wasn’t inconsiderable, but you also tend to be a teenager when you get them. Distractors are frequently used for toddler age children and younger.
Ostiio’s device is designed to improve upon current distractors, which tend to protrude through the skin, create a high risk of infection and require parents to use a screwdriver to expand the distractor a little bit at a time.
The business seeks to compete with larger, more established medical device companies that produce distractors such as KLS Martin and Depuy Synthes. Wes believes by creating a device that doesn’t protrude through the skin it can significantly cut the infection risk and improve upon current distractor designs.
Ostiio’s device is currently at the proof-of-concept stage.
A few other Penn-affiliated startups at SXSW included Biorealize —an automated biolab to design and test genetically modified organisms, breast milk management and analytics startup Keriton, which took part in Dreamit’s accelerator program, and NeuroFlow, a digital health business that analyzes biometric data to quantify stress to improve mental health treatment.
