Polyembo—a medical device company founded to develop the Scrunchy, Sphere, PuffyCoil and other vascular embolisation technologies—has announced the closing of a new round of funding, which was led by a multinational strategic investor, and will be used to advance innovative product development and regulatory clearances.
“Polyembo’s Scrunchy is a novel vascular embolic technology that addresses real challenges with existing products,” said Jeremy Durack (Veterans Administration Medical Center, Palo Alto, USA).
The Scrunchy device is designed with multiple self-expanding and self-sizing struts packed with hundreds of dense absorbent fibres to promote occlusion and stability in the vessel. According to Polyembo, the wide range of vessel sizes that can be treated with Scrunchy could reduce the cost and complexity of inventory management.
The company goes on to state in a recent press release that key challenges with vascular embolisation devices—used to stop bleeding, devascularise tumours, occlude arteriovenous malformations, and seal aneurysms, as well as for numerous other indications—include placement accuracy, device migration, embolic efficiency, landing zone length, and requirements for hospitals to stock hundreds of different device diameters and lengths to treat areas throughout the body.
The Scrunchy is an innovative vascular embolic designed to provide simple, accurate and stable delivery of an occlusive implant. Two Scrunchy sizes are intended to treat a wide range of vessel diameters through small, 0.027-inch microcatheters.
“The Scrunchy occludes fast, grips the vessel wall, and could significantly reduce the number of devices we need to order,” Durack continued. “Currently, we stock so many different products sizes and lengths which the Scrunchy could replace with just two sizes. I look forward to seeing this technology developed.”
Polyembo’s recent press release notes that the Scrunchy, Sphere and PuffyCoil devices are under development, and do not have marketing clearance or approval at this time.
