CardioMind, a Sunnyvale, California startup developing a new coronary stent called Sparrow™, has announced that the device was successfully implanted in a dozen Australian patients as part of an initial clinical trial. The stent was designed to target blood vessels smaller than 2.75 mm in diameter, according to the company.
The unique design of the CardioMind Sparrow stent permits it to travel within the guidewire lumen to the site of the lesion. There the cardiologist releases the stent and allows it to self-expand to the vessel wall. By contrast, conventional balloon-expandable stents travel over guidewires to the lesion, and thus, by their very design, occupy more volume.
The Sparrow stent also offers more flexibility than current stents, making it especially adaptable to treatment of the small, tortuous blood vessels often associated with diabetes.
To coat the Sparrow stent, CardioMind has licensed the rights to the SynBiosys biodegradable polymer system from SurModics, Inc. “The SynBiosys polymer allows the Sparrow stent to gradually return to a bare metal state, where we as an industry have 15 years of data showing no increase in late stent thrombosis,” says Maroney.
Press release: CardioMind Launches First-in-Human Trial of Small Vessel, Drug-Eluting Stent…
CardioMind website with nothing inside…