Vascugenix, a Little Rock startup run mostly by students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, plans to bring its medical device for emergency heart surgeries to market in late August or early September.
The device is called the Speed-Torque. It was invented and patented by Dr. Dwight Chrisman, chief cardiologist at Baptist Health in Little Rock, and the company is led by undergraduate student Noah Asher.
Asher told Arkansas Business that surgeons can use the device to perform lifesaving emergency heart surgeries more easily and more quickly.
Here’s how it works, according to Asher:
If you have a heart attack and are taken to a hospital, a surgeon will “make a small incision in either your radial or femoral artery” and run a “guide wire” through that artery to your heart.
The purpose of this is to get blood flowing back to the heart as soon as possible.
“The current way for maneuvering the guide wire is really cumbersome, and it requires two hands. A lot of times, it forces the surgeon to have to take their attention or their hands off the patient during the procedure, increasing surgery time and increasing the risk for patient harm,” Asher said.
Surgeons can use the Speed-Torque to manipulate the guide wire, reducing surgery time and risk, he said.
The device is a physician’s preference item, meaning it will be sold directly to surgeons instead of going through a process that involves hospital purchasing committees.
The next steps for Vascugenix are to raise capital and conduct premarket clinical trials. The trials have been requested by hospital purchasing managers but aren’t required for regulatory approval, Asher said.
The company has partnered with Arkansas Heart Hospital, Baptist Health and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences for the trials, he said.
In addition, Vascugenix is seeking $1.4 million from investors to add to the $75,000 it has earned by placing in four competitions this year. The $1.4 million would support operations for 20 months, until the startup becomes self-sustaining, Asher said.
Vascugenix’s accolades so far are:
- First place in the Winrock Automotive Undergraduate Division and the undergraduate Innovate Arkansas Innovation Division award at the Arkansas Governor’s Cup;
- Second place in the International Competition at Western University in Ontario, Canada; and
- Third place in the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge at the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business in Minneapolis.
Most exciting though, Asher said, was finishing in the top 10 in the Rice Business Plan Competition at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business in Houston. “It’s the largest and richest student venture competition in the world,” he said. “There’s well over 400 applicants every year; 42 teams are selected to come and compete.”
He said most of the startups Vascugenix competed against were composed of doctoral and MBA students from Harvard, MIT, Cambridge and other schools much larger and more prestigious than UA Little Rock.
Most of the team that has been competing — Asher; Anna Helm, a nurse at Baptist Health’s Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit and Asher’s wife; UA Little Rock Professor Martial Trigeaud — came together about a year ago to commercialize Chrisman’s, the surgeon’s, invention. UA Little Rock undergraduate students Abigail Resendiz and Zach Cochran joined the team in October.
“Over the years, [Chrisman had] experienced a lot of frustration in performing these particular types of interventional cardiac surgeries, then came up with the idea for a device that would reduce surgical time and make his job a lot easier,” Asher said. “He was the person that came up with the idea for the device, but really didn’t have an understanding of what he was supposed to do with the idea once he developed it.”
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