Centerline Biomedical Awarded $1.5M Phase II NIH SBIR Grant to Advance Development of Next-Generation IOPS Technology

Surgical navigation startup wins fourth small business award from NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to extend novel technology to address peripheral vascular disease

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Centerline Biomedical

Apr 22, 2020, 08:00 ET

CLEVELAND, April 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Centerline Biomedical, Inc. (Centerline) announced on April 21, 2020 the receipt of a Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This represents the fourth small business grant awarded to the startup founded to commercialize and innovate IOPS™, a novel image guidance technology platform originally developed at Cleveland Clinic.

The IOPS™ platform was invented as a way to address limitations in fluoroscopy, the present standard of care for image guidance in minimally-invasive vascular surgery, which depends heavily on radiation and toxic contrast dyes to provide a relatively low-fidelity 2-D image. IOPS serves as an adjunct to fluoroscopy, providing interactive and intuitive 3-D color image guidance without continuous use of radiation. The first product in the platform, FDA-cleared for use in the descending aorta, is on the market now, while advanced development continues on this technology with the goals of improving surgical precision, efficiency, safety, and cost.

This NIH grant award provides funding to extend Centerline's IOPS™ technology for developing IOPS™ product to address peripheral vascular disease (PVD), a condition affecting an estimated 8.5 million Americans. The company's Chief Technology Officer, Vikash Goel, will serve as Principal Investigator for this 2-year project which has a total budget of approximately $1.5 million. "Expanding our platform to include more indications like peripheral disease will help demonstrate the ultimate value of IOPS™," remarked Goel. "We started in the aorta where we could make a big impact right away on high-cost procedures that can involve high radiation doses. Now it's time to reach more patients."

The company's CEO, Philip D. Rackliffe, noted that the technology's value proposition is timely. "The potential of IOPS™ to make more efficient use of clinical resources is more important today than ever," he explained. "On the other side of this COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare system will have a severe backlog to address. This will shine focus on game-changing technologies like ours because of the need to improve throughput, safety, and quality of care."

SOURCE Centerline Biomedical