Article preview from IN VIVO - March, 2013
Noted physician/entrepreneur John Simpson is back. His latest company, Avinger, has finally achieved his long-sought goal: combining imaging and therapeutics in catheter technology for crossing CTOs. Will clinical innovation be enough to reward Avinger in an increasingly economically focused medtech world?
Article preview from IN VIVO - March, 2013
Noted physician/entrepreneur John Simpson is back. His latest company, Avinger, has finally achieved his long-sought goal: combining imaging and therapeutics in catheter technology for crossing CTOs. Will clinical innovation be enough to reward Avinger in an increasingly economically focused medtech world?
- Chronic total occlusions (CTOs) are among the most vexing challenges facing clinicians in treating both coronary and peripheral vascular disease.
- Noted physician/entrepreneur John Simpson has long advocated the benefits that visualization capability would add to a catheter-based CTO-crossing device, but like others, has previously been unsuccessful in combining these technologies.
- Simpson persisted – and succeeded ( despite the lack of interest from venture investors, who, notwithstanding his unparalleled track record, were jaundiced by the previous failures in this space.
- The result: Avinger is the first to successfully combine visualization with a powered catheter technology capable of crossing CTOs, and is initially concentrating on peripheral vessels.
- Beyond CTOs, Avinger believes it ultimately has a tool that can help physicians better assess vascular disease from within vessels, and consequently better tailor the treatment.
- But will the market reward this long-sought technology or will it be seen as an unaffordable luxury in today’s cost-constrained environment?
With the medtech industry facing perhaps its most challenging time in terms of start-up development, no one would have begrudged John Simpson, MD, PhD, the luxury of retiring from the device industry in 2007 following the sale of his seventh company, atherectomy developer FoxHollow Technologies Inc., to ev3 Inc. (now part of Covidien Ltd.) for $780 million. Certainly after nearly 30 years in medtech, Simpson had earned the right to spend more time with his family – now up to 17 children and grandchildren ( and on the golf course.
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