NEW YORK, April 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Profusa, Inc., based in South San Francisco, Calif., today announced that it was the recipient of the 2016 Edison Silver Award in the Health and Wellness Wearable and Sensors category for innovative design and technology. The company received the prestigious award for its tissue-integrating biosensors that enable long-term continuous monitoring of body chemistry for the management of personal health and disease. The award was given last night at the black-tie Edison Awards Gala held at New York’s historic Capitale ballroom.
The Edison Awards honor excellence in new product and service development, marketing, design, and innovation. Named for famed innovator Thomas Alva Edison, who achieved vast notoriety with 1,093 U.S. patents the program annually honors the best in innovations and innovators. The Edison Award is one of the most prestigious accolades a company can receive for innovation and business success. The nominees for the Edison Awards were judged by a panel of over 3,000 business executives, including past award winners, academics, and leaders in the fields of design, engineering, science, and medicine.
“On behalf of all our dedicated employees, investors, and board of directors, we are honored to receive this award of distinction from the Edison Awards judging committee,” said Ben Hwang, Ph.D., Profusa’s chairman and chief executive officer. “And a special thanks to Scot Herbst of Herbst Produkt for their elegant mix of design and science to make the Lumee Oxygen Sensing System a reality. This award serves to further our commitment to developing transformative technology and products that improve the quality of life for people in health and disease.”
Tissue-integrating Biosensors
Profusa is developing biosensors that provide immediate, actionable information to individuals, physicians, caregivers, and health practitioners. Its novel bioengineering approach overcomes the largest hurdle in long-term use of biosensors to access biochemical information in the body: the foreign body response. Placed under the skin with a specially designed injector, each tiny biosensor is a flexible fiber, 3-5 mm long and approximately 500 microns in diameter. Rather than being isolated from the body, Profusa’s biosensors work fully integrated within the body’s tissue without any metal device or electronics while overcoming the effects of the foreign body response for up to two years.
Each biosensor is comprised of a bioengineered “smart hydrogel” (similar to contact lens material) forming a porous, tissue-integrating scaffold that induces capillary and cellular in-growth from surrounding tissue. The smart gel is linked to a light-emitting molecule that continuously signals the presence of a body chemical such as oxygen, glucose, or other biomarker.
Optical Reader
A separate optical reader adhered to the skin is used to read the fluorescent signal from the embedded biosensor. The reader sends excitation signals through the skin to the biosensor, which then emits fluorescent light proportional to the concentration of molecules of interest. The data is relayed to a smart phone for an encrypted personal record and historical tracking. Data can be shared securely via HIPAA-compliant digital networks with healthcare providers.
Lumee Oxygen Sensing System
Profusa’s first medical product, the Lumee Oxygen Sensing System, is aimed at being the only long-term monitoring technology that directly measures tissue oxygen levels, helping to determine if sufficient tissue oxygen persists throughout the treatment and healing process in vascular interventions or in wounds. Taking as much as a year to heal, if at all, chronic wounds from diabetic ulcers, pressure sores, and reconstructive surgery take a financial toll on patients and the healthcare system.
Oxygen monitoring of localized tissues after surgical repair of blood vessels is an unmet medical need in the treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD). Characterized by the buildup of arterial plaque and decreased tissue oxygen, as the disease advances patients with PAD can experience significant leg pain with impaired mobility (claudication), and in its most severe form, critical limb ischemia (CLI), gangrene and limb amputation. PAD affects 202 million people worldwide, 27 million of whom live in Europe and North America, with an annual economic burden of more than $74 billion in the U.S. alone.
Herbst Produkt
Herbst Produkt is a multi-disciplinary design studio with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago. Since 1964 Herbst has been developing products and innovating across the consumer and medical technology landscape and has received numerous awards for their distinctive work. For more information visit http://www.herbstprodukt.com
About the Edison Awards
The Edison Awards is a program conducted by Edison Universe, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering future innovators. The Awards have been recognizing and honoring the best in innovations and innovators since 1987. They honor game-changing innovations that are at the forefront of new product and service development, marketing and human-centered design, and are one of the highest accolades a company can receive in the name of successful innovation. For more information visit www.edisonawards.com
Profusa, Inc.
Profusa, Inc. is leading the development of a new generation of tissue-integrated sensors that empowers an individual with the ability to monitor their unique body chemistry in unprecedented ways to transform the management of personal health and disease. Overcoming the body’s response to foreign material for long-term use, its technology promises to be the foundational platform of real-time biochemical detection through the development of tiny bioengineered sensors that become one with the body to detect and continuously transmit actionable, medical-grade data for personal and medical use. For more information see http://www.profusa.com
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SOURCE Profusa, Inc.
