Prof. Daniel Cohn, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Offer Amir, The Heart Institute, Hadassah Medical Center
Dr. Nachman Dean, The Heart Institute, Hadassah Medical Center
Application:
- Heart failure (HF), which holds a high mortality rate, remains one of the major public health problems in developed countries. In the U.S. alone, 6.5 million patients have HF symptoms, and 500,000 new patients are diagnosed each year. HF costs in the U.S. are estimated to be at least $33 billion.
- Despite major improvements in HF care, 1/3 of the patients remain symptomatic, and 10% progress to advanced HF.
Our innovation:
- A personalized, 3D-printed, shape-memory displaying device.
- After receiving the individual patient’s medical imaging digital data, a 3D-printed personalized-device is created, using our unique shape memory-displaying “inks”, which will render the device with the ability to minimize post-implantation pericardial adhesions.
Advantages:
The system ability to interact, both anatomically and physiologically, with the heart muscle, is of utmost clinical importance. The enhanced performance of the new device – that has demonstrated its ability in animal model of HF – will also be due to its ability to:
- Display shape memory capabilities to allow its facile and non-injurious deployment around the heart;
- Minimize the formation of post-implantation adhesions, which often impair cardiac function, and severely complicate future procedures;
- Exhibit custom-made biodegradability, when the patient’s pathology so mandates;
- Offer a solution for specific subtypes of HF, lacking additional treatments options.
Opportunity:
- A service, provided to hospitals’ cardiac surgical unit, receiving a ready-for-implantation, 3D-printed, sterile device, tailored per patient.
- The technology is of broad applicability, besides cardiac applications, such as the gastro-intestinal tract, along the vasculature and the airway system.
- The post-surgical adhesion-prevention capability, that was developed, can easily be extrapolated to other areas, e.g. general and pelvic surgery, in the gynecological field and in orthopedics.
