Houston — Executives at Houston’s Medical Adhesive Revolution have been focusing on developing wound-closure technology since the company first came to prominence following its win at the 2014 Rice Business Plan Competition.
Since that time, company president Alexander Schueller and his management team have turned their attentions to softer yet important issues such as marketing and brand. The company, which is German-born and calls Houston its U.S. home, is now called Adhesys Medical and has unveiled a new website to go with the new name. “This has been a journey that has been prompted by a variety of factors: the old name was difficult to pronounce; it was not very memorable,” Schueller says.
Adhesys has developed a surgical adhesive that the company says is stronger than those currently available on the market. Its adhesive is made of Polyurethane, which already has a variety of commercial applications in construction and automobiles. Adhesys is working on applications that can be used on and in the body. (Company co-founder and chief scientific officer Heike Heckroth worked on the adhesive project at Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant. He and other co-founders started Adhesys after Bayer declined to pursue the project.)
Winning the Rice University competition brought the company more than $500,000—$200,000 of which came from the Goose Society of Texas, which counts among its members Jack Gill, co-founder of Vanguard Ventures and a Rice entrepreneurship professor; Rod Canion, founder of Houston’s Compaq Computer; and Nancy Chang, who founded Houston biotech Tanox. Last summer, Adhesys closed on $3 million in investment, and previously raised about $2.5 million from European investors.
The new branding comes as Adhesys is preparing to apply for its CE permit this summer in order to get its topical treatment in the market later this year. For its product to be used inside the body, the company will soon begin a clinical study as part of its plans for commercialization, Schueller says.
Adhesys hired a chief commercialization officer last year, which prompted the decision that “Medical Adhesive Revolution” didn’t reflect what the company is, Schueller says. “We’re still revolutionizing wound closure,” he adds, “even if it’s not in the name anymore.”
