Aspire Bariatrics Inc.

Article preview from Start-Up - September, 2012

An ideal minimally invasive bariatric technology should be safe, easily implantable, suitable as a permanent therapy, and allow patients to eat a normal diet. Aspire Bariatrics Inc. thinks its solution fits the bill. With the AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System, patients have control over their weight loss as they are able, about 20 minutes after a meal, to drain a portion of their stomach contents through an endoscopically implanted tube, thus reducing the number of calories absorbed by the body.

 

Aspire Bariatrics Inc.

Article preview from Start-Up - September, 2012

With only 1% of the eligible obese population choosing to undergo bariatric surgery annually, the huge, untapped bariatrics device space is characterized by a number of "outside the box thinking" minimally invasive technologies looking to provide an attractive alternative to invasive and permanent gastric bypass, and lifestyle-impacting gastric banding. An ideal product must be minimally invasive, reversible, safe, suitable as a permanent therapy, and minimally intrusive into patients' lives. Further, it should allow patients to eat a normal diet, be inexpensive to the health care system, and be easily implantable by a large number of physicians of ordinary skill, that is, gastroenterologists (GIs) rather than only specialized bariatric surgeons. This is the list of requirements that has guided start-up Aspire Bariatrics Inc. as it developed and is now launching its AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System.

Aspire Bariatrics (formerly Aspirations Medical Technology LLC) was formed in 2005 as a collaboration among three physicians looking to develop a more effective, less-invasive, low-risk method of weight loss for the obese patient than what is currently available. The founders, Samuel Klein, Moshe Shike, and Stephen Solomon, with combined expertise in obesity, nutrition, gastroenterology, medical device discovery, and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tubes, modified a commonly used PEG tube to make it suitable for weight loss purposes. With their invention, the AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System, patients have control over their weight loss as they are able, about 20 minutes after a meal, to drain a portion of their stomach contents through an endoscopically implanted tube, thus reducing the number of calories absorbed by the body.

The physicians constructed a prototype device in 2005 and tested it on three morbidly obese patients in 2006, with excellent weight loss results at three-month follow-up (one patient kept the device in place for about five years).

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