Biotech breakthrough: Firm aims to lessen time analyzing blood

William Walker, president of HemoSonics LLC, believes his Charlottesville-based medical device startup could bring substantial improvements to the way physicians analyze the balance between bleeding and clotting. When it goes awry, that balance can result in such leading causes of death as heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolism or excessive bleeding.

The prevailing method of such analysis, known as thromboelastography, or TEG, was invented in 1948 and is a mechanical process that can be difficult to use and difficult to interpret, Walker said.

His company is developing an ultrasound-based instrument that will allow physicians to more easily and more rapidly assess a patient’s blood for abnormal clotting characteristics while in the operating room, emergency room or some other clinical setting, thereby guiding doctors as they respond in cases of excessive bleeding or clotting.

“Our technology is very easy to use and very easy to operate,” said Walker, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia. “When there’s blood everywhere, you don’t have a lot of time to spend doing analysis.”

HemoSonics was founded in 2004 by Walker and fellow UVa biomedical engineering professors Francesco Viola and Michael Lawrence. The company’s original prototype was developed in-house at UVa.

Like many startup biotech companies, HemoSonics has endured a lengthy road to reach its current stage. Now, on the cusp of bringing its product to market, the company faces a new set of challenges as it attempts to achieve profitability.

HemoSonics’ technology relies on sonorheometry, an ultrasound-based tool that can provide physicians detailed information about a patient’s blood. The company is now testing and refining its first commercial prototype, which it hopes to bring to market in about 15 months.

The device will launch in Europe, where the regulatory environment is less stringent, followed by a debut in the United States about six months later. Walker estimates the U.S. market to be about $2 billion, with the total global market to be about $12 billion.

The company will initially target the device toward hospitals’ intensive care units, given its potential value in aiding open heart surgery, trauma and liver disease patients.

In 2010, HemoSonics received a number of research grants, including $1.6 million from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; $298,000 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; and $70,000 from the Office of Naval Research.

Dr. Neeral Shah, a UVa professor of gastroenterology and one of HemoSonics’ clinical collaborators, said HemoSonics’ technology could be a potential “game changer.”

“Right now, there’s no really good way to know who’s going to bleed and who’s going to clot,” said Shah, who deals primarily with liver disease patients. “This device gives a snapshot of a patient, if they’re at risk of bleeding or clotting, and tells you what the defect is.”

HemoSonics’ technology, Shah said, could allow physicians to save more lives, and at a lower cost than existing technology.

“If this device works, I’ll tell you, it would quite honestly be a game changer,” he said.

HemoSonics is a licensee of the UVa Patent Foundation, as the technology was developed at the university. Miette Michie, executive director and CEO of the foundation, said the company’s technology has “great potential.”

“It’s going to be great technology to have in the operating room,” she said. “It will enable surgeons to understand a person’s blood and adjust medications in real time.”