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The Company's innovations in polymers for
bioresorbable device coatings amount to a technology platform
for localized drug delivery. Novel methods of drug delivery
are one of the hot topics in biotechnology today. Many drugs
are unsuited to the harsh chemical processes involved in digesting
and metabolizing a substance taken orally, limiting their
application to treating disease.
Until now, delivering a drug directly
into the bloodstream has generally required injecting it,
which in turn has meant sharp peaks and valleys in blood
levels of the drug over time - again,
possibly precluding its use in human patients even though it
works well in the test tube or even in animals.
Now, building on our success in developing drug-eluting stents, Biosensors is
pioneering devices designed to elute drugs into the bloodstream
in a steady, controlled way while the device itself is being
completely absorbed by the body. At the end of the process,
only the patient's own tissues will remain!
This approach may prove to be the key to treating a number
of diseases where candidate drug agents, promising in theory,
have proven unsuitable for oral or injected delivery due to
the biochemical hazards of digestion and metabolism and/or
such needs as steady, controlled dosing.
We see multi-billion-dollar potential for this technology
platform in the first years following its approval and market
introduction. |
