Nitinol, a superelastic nickel and titanium alloy, allows deformation and subsequent full recovery of the original shape upon exposure to body heat.
NSVascular will focus on developing and commercializing TFN-covered stents for endovascular applications, with its first two applications being flow-diverting stents for intracranial aneurysms (IA) and stents for treating peripheral artery disease (PAD).
A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in collaboration with physicians from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has been engaged in the development and the in vitro/in vivo testing of TFN-covered IA and PAD stents.
NSVascular co-founder, scientific advisor and UCLA’s Division of Interventional Neuroradiology director Fernando Vinuela said pre-clinical in vivo testing has shown a remarkable 100% aneurysm occlusion rate within minutes of treatment, an achievement unmatched by competing flow-diverting technologies.
"Furthermore, our TFN-covered flow-diverting stent keeps the flexibility of the delivery system allowing safer distal intracranial navigation and stenting of a larger number of aneurysms," Vinuela said.
