Surefire Infusion System to be used for obesity treatment

May 2 2013

Surefire Medical, Inc., the developer of a new class of infusion systems designed to maximize targeted delivery of embolization agents without reflux, today announced that the company's Surefire Infusion System will be used in the development of the first clinically viable microcatheter-based, minimally invasive treatment for obesity as an alternative to bariatric surgery.

The Bariatric Arterial Embolization research at Johns Hopkins Medicine, led by principal investigators, Clifford Weiss , M.D., Assistant Professor of Radiology, and Dara Kraitchman , V.M.D, Ph. D,. FACC, Professor of Radiology, a porcine study, began May 1, 2013 with a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The procedure precisely targets the fundus, the area of the stomach that produces ghrelin or the 'hunger hormone.'   Multiple pharmacological attempts to curb ghrelin, a gastric hormone that stimulates hunger, have been largely unsuccessful. 

The novel Surefire Infusion technology, with its unique expandable antireflux tip, was chosen for its ability to:

• Improve targeting
• Prevent reflux into healthy, non-target tissue
• Achieve deeper penetration of the X-Ray visible embolic beads (XEBs) developed for this study

"Bariatric Embolization will be the world's first image-guided, minimally invasive procedure targeting obesity that could be a viable alternative to bariatric surgery," said Aravind Arepally , M.D., Surefire Medical's Chief Scientific Officer and former Clinical Director for the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design at Johns Hopkins.  "In our prior work, which showed that this procedure may be as effective as bariatric surgery in curbing hunger, we realized that precise delivery into the gastric fundus was critical.   The Surefire's unique properties enable the more highly targeted, precise delivery vital for development of a new obesity treatment."