Rox Gets Blood Pumping in COPD

Article preview from IN VIVO - March 01, 2011

Rox Medical is taking an unusual approach to treating COPD by introducing a vascular device that increases oxygen delivery to tissue and cardiac output. The potential has investors' hearts racing as well.

Rox Gets Blood Pumping in COPD

Article preview from IN VIVO - March 01, 2011

By Tom Salemi

• The unintended result of an effort to create a pulmonary hypertension model in animals, Rox Medical's FLO2W system might someday be used to treat a wide range of patients with later-stage COPD.
• Rather than employing a device to repair diseased lung tissue, Rox Medical's vascular coupler treats a COPD patients hypoxia by improving oxygen delivery to the rest of the body.
• Rox's FLO2W system is deployed by interventionalist, not a pulmonologist, bringing in a specialty known for quick technology adoption into the fight against COPD.
• The company also is trying to position itself as an attractive acquisition target or partner by pursuing potential applications in hypertension and other large markets.

Venture capitalists have spent the past decade backing a series of companies developing devices to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To a company, the approaches have followed the traditional device model of identifying a structural problem, and then creating a tool or implant to fix that defect. In the case of COPD, the defects exist within the lung's bronchioles, the thousands of small, thin tubes that draw in and exhale air. At the end of the bronchioles, alveoli, tiny air sacs, serve as the exchange point for blood and air. Blood discharges the carbon dioxide to be exhaled while extracting oxygen from the air. Alveoli and bronchioles struck by chronic bronchitis or emphysema die off or lose the elasticity that allowed the lungs to do their job.

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