Newly formed medical temperature management company Mercury Biomed said Wednesday it won a $1.4 million loan from the Ohio Third Frontier Commercialization Acceleration Loan Fund for its Smart Temperature management system.
The company’s Smart Temperature management system work through applying heat along the back of the neck to send a signal to the body’s thermostat which responds by increasing blood flow on-demand, followed by water-circulating tubes that supply heat or cold to polymeric cooling pads at the hands and feet.
The device uses induced high blood flow between extremities and body cores to accelerate bioheat transfer non-invasively.
“We are grateful to the State of Ohio for the CALF award. We located our company in Cleveland, The Medical Capital, because of access to this type of valuable funding and to world-class medical institutions such as Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals,” CEO Brad Pulver said in a press release.
Mercury Biomed is a joint venture between Texas-based CoolCore and Cleveland-based Innovative Medical Equipment, formed earlier this year to commercialize its non-invasive core temperature management technology.
“The potential for our Smart Temperature Management technology is tremendous, as there are more than 65 million surgical procedures and ischemic events such as sudden cardiac arrest, stroke and traumatic brain injury occurring each year in the U.S. alone that require core body cooling or warming. The U.S. market for temperature management solutions is more than $2 billion, and private payer and Medicare reimbursement is already well-established,” co-founder & veep Brian Patrick said in a prepared statement.
The company has initiated clinical trials for WarmsSmart therapy with the device at “a premier medical institution in Cleveland,” and trials for its SmartCool technology are scheduled for early 2016. SmartCool is designed to induce mild hypothermia in patients suffering ischemic events to reduce irreversible brain and organ damage.
Mercury Biomed hopes to launch the WarmSmart in 2016 and SmartCool in 2018, dependent upon clinical trial outcomes and FDA 510(k) clearances for the devices.