Date: Mar 22, 2007 Author: Kevin Robinson-Avila Source: bizjournals (
click here to go to the source)
The painful jab of a hypodermic needle followed by tubes filling with blood might soon be as archaic as a dentist pulling teeth without Novocain.
Thanks to the development of "ElectroNeedles" at Sandia National Laboratories, doctors could soon test patients for diseases and abnormalities by using painless micro patches that draw no blood and that offer nearly immediate results.
Two start-up companies are working to market the technology, which Sandia leaders predict will change the face of medical diagnostics in the near future.
"This technology has very broad applications," says Paul Smith, a licensing executive at Sandia. "We believe a whole new industry could grow up around it."
Given its potential to transform medical diagnostics, Sandia opted to license the technology to more than one company. "We decided to license this without restrictions," Smith says. "We want companies to move into markets where they see opportunities as quickly as they can."
New Mexico Biotech Inc., which formed in spring 2006, was the first to license the technology in January. The company has nine partners that include life sciences experts, says CEO Craig Wingate.
"We believe the technology offers tremendous opportunities," Wingate says.
A second company, Life Bioscience Inc., expects to obtain a license from Sandia in April. That company was formed in mid-2006 by Jeb Flemming, a former Sandia scientist who led the original research at Sandia.
"I left the lab in November to commercialize this technology," Flemming says. "I took the plunge after seven years at Sandia because I have that much faith in its potential."
The technology is actually quite simple, says Sandia physicist Stephen Casalnuovo, who manages the lab's biosensors and nano materials department. It relies on micron-sized needles that barely penetrate the skin. The needles, in turn, contain tiny electrodes that measure molecules inside the body, eliminating the need to draw blood from the patient and providing almost instantaneous results.
Since the needles are only about twice the diameter of a human hair, developers can place up to 100 needles on a single, square-centimeter patch. If each needle measures something different in the body, doctors can conduct dozens of tests simultaneously.
"You could do tens of different measurements all at the same time," Casalnuovo says. "In an emergency situation, a doctor could get a rapid and complete picture of a patient's health right at the point of care."
The needles have so far only been tested on pig skin. But in those tests, they accurately measured glucose for diabetes, and they also detected the presence of Troponin I -- a protein released into the blood stream during heart attacks -- raising the prospect of a new, rapid emergency-room test for heart-attack victims.
Flemming says his company will concentrate on developing the technology's potential for multiple, simultaneous testing in emergency situations.
"I envision a diagnostic suite for general health monitoring," Flemming says. "The doctor can slap a patch on an unresponsive patient and get immediate indications of whether he's looking at a heart attack victim, a diabetic, someone who's overdosed on drugs, or whatever."
Flemming says two angel investors put $500,000 into Life Bioscience, allowing the company to set up a small office and laboratory with four part-time, contract employees. The company is now looking for $5 million in venture capital to do clinical trials and take its first product through the Federal Drug Administration approval process.
For its part, New Mexico Biotech is about to close on negotiations with investors. "We're in the final throes of putting together a first round of funding," Wingate says. "It's right around the corner."
But given the non-exclusivity of the Sandia license, Wingate says product development is confidential. "We see extensive and far-reaching applications for the technology, but we can't talk about specifics," he says.
The company expects five to 10 years to get FDA approval for a suite of new diagnostic products, but Wingate says the firm will focus on developing one product at a time.
"Our product road map focuses on smaller bites with manageable, go-to-market strategies for quicker FDA approval," Wingate says. "We'll take it in phases."
