Veran Medical
May 01, 2009
ST LOUIS, May 1, 2009 – Veran Medical Technologies and VIDA Diagnostics announced today that they have entered a partnership to jointly develop endobronchial navigation solutions. VIDA Diagnostics is the leader in pulmonary image analysis software and its Pulmonary Workstation 2 that has processed over 10,000 CT scans is well validated as the gold standard for bronchus segmentation. Veran Medical Technologies markets and develops the best in class electromagnetic solutions in the lung with its ig4 Plug-N-Play Navigation system. Both parties are excited about bringing their expertise in their respective markets together to develop solutions for the emerging endobronchial navigation market. It is estimated there were over 500,000 bronchoscopic procedures in the US last year that could benefit from their new products.
“VIDA Diagnostics is a natural fit for Veran in the bronchoscopic navigation market; they are the best at what they do. When we approached VIDA about a potential collaboration, we were excited to hear they saw the same synergies,” said Jerome R. Edwards, Veran president and chief executive officer.
“Mating Veran’s navigation experience, elegant hardware solutions and unique respiratory tracking capability with our leading lung analysis and mapping will create a new benchmark in bronchoscopic guidance to central and peripheral targets,” said John Garber, chief executive officer at VIDA Diagnostics. “Our users have been asking for us to bring Pulmonary Workstation 2 into the Bronch suite. We are very excited about the solutions we can provide together.”
Veran and VIDA will be demonstrating their “work in progress” solutions and 510K cleared ig4 Plug-N-Play Navigation System and Pulmonary Workstation 2, respectively, at the upcoming American Association for Thoracic Surgery (“AATS”), May 9-13th in Boston, MA and the American Thoracic Society (“ATS”), May 15-20th in San Diego, CA.
Veran is a privately held medical device company headquartered in St. Louis, MO. The company’s mission is to empower physicians to diagnose cancer earlier and to enable precision therapy to save lives. In the United States, lung cancer kills more people each year than breast, prostate, pancreatic and colon cancers combined.
Veran has developed and commercialized an FDA cleared, next generation electromagnetic thoracic navigation platform called the SPiN Thoracic Navigation System®. Veran’s breakthrough technology has been adopted by leading cancer centers throughout the United States. Veran provides physicians with a full line of bronchoscopic brushes, needles, forceps and steerable catheters with tiny electromagnetic sensors embedded in the tips for precise navigation. The combination of these proprietary Always-On Tip Tracked® instruments and Veran’s exclusive patient respiratory gating technology enables physicians to accurately access lung nodules by accounting for nodule movement during patient breathing, a common challenge for lung specialists.
Another challenge lung specialists face is that approximately 40% of lung nodules lie outside of an airway, making them very difficult to reach endobronchially, and traditionally requiring an additional procedure. Veran’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation System® is the first and only FDA cleared technology that enables Pulmonologists or Thoracic Surgeons to safely and accurately access lung nodules outside of an airway using SPiN Perc®, a navigated transthoracic needle. With SPiN Perc®, Veran combines endobronchial navigation with percutaneous navigation, allowing physicians to access all lung nodules in a single procedure, regardless of nodule size or location. This eliminates the cost and risk of unnecessary procedures and empowers physicians to provide a same day diagnosis for their patients. The early diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer has been proven to save lives.