Ostial Solutions has raised $137,530 from the sale of equity, according to SEC documents.
The medical device startup, based in Kalamazoo, MI, is seeking about $350,000, the filing says.
Founded in 2003, Ostial’s guided catheter technology helps surgeons to precisely position a stent, a device that props open clogged arteries, in patients suffering blockages occurring at the origin of blood vessels arising from the aorta.
Such aorto-ostial blockages account for 95 percent of cases in which doctors use stents to treat diseased kidney arteries and eight percent of coronary heart disease cases, according to industry figures.
Normally, doctors would use X-rays and angiographic imaging to help determine where to place the stent. But Ostial says such techniques are imprecise, time consuming, and expose patients to harmful radiation. In addition, doctors often have to place multiple stents at the site because they miss about 50 percent of all aorto-ostial stent procedures, the company says.
Ostial received a big boost last November when it licensed its technology to Cordis, the vascular device unit of Johnson & Johnson. Cordis said it would begin selling the system around the world in the first half of 2011.
Ostial’s technology “can help make precise stent placement easier, safer, and more predictable,” said Campbell Rogers, Cordis’s chief scientific officer and head of global research and development, in a statement. “This technology may reduce the need for additional stents and may reduce the risk of having to perform another intervention for restenosis [reclogging of the artery]. Based on these benefits, this simple device should become a standard element of aorto-ostial stenting.”
The company’s chief scientific officer, Tim Fischell, also a professor of medicine at Michigan State University, helped designed the platform technology that eventually led to J&J’s Cypher drug eluting stent.
Ostial previously raised $700,000 from individual investors and Dempsey Ventures in Grand Rapids, MI, a holding that acquires stakes and helps manage medical device companies. Dempsey Ventures founder and CEO Dan Bowen currently sits on Ostial’s board of directors.
