Biocoatings: Not Just the Icing on the Cake
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
The successful commercialization of drug-eluting stents (DES) has done much to pave the way for the biocoating industy. DES not only helped establish a new regulatory body to facilitate device-drug reviews, the FDA Office of Combination Products, they also proved that biocoated devices could take market share from uncoated products, command premium pricing and premium reimbursement.
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Rimon Therapeutics Ltd.
Rimon Therapeutics set out to discover polymers that would achieve a therapeutic effect without acting like drugs; that is, they would act locally, wouldn't be metabolized, and wouldn't be soluble. The company has initially focused its product development efforts on wound healing, with two technologies, polymer beads that induce angiogenesis, and a polymer that sequesters matrix metalloproteinases.
Allvivo Inc.
Allvivo, one of the newest surface modification companies, is jumping into the hottest and most financeable segment of the medical device industry with its own drug-coated coronary stent. Its biomimetic stent coating has two properties that suit it for its intended use; a polymer coating that prevents the attachment and activation of platelets, fibringoen and other coagulation enzymes at the stent surface, and an anti-inflammatory protein.
Affinergy Inc.
Affinergy has--patented and in the freezer--peptide binders that stick specifically to the common materials of which medical implants are made, for example, collagen, titanium and stainless steel. These are the starting point for the company's device coating platform. The other part of the biocoating, which attaches to the device-binding peptide by a linker, is a peptide that binds to a specific protein or cell type of interest to a partner.