Intra Cerebral Balloon Pump: A Platform to Actively Assess and Improve Brain Perfusion in TBI and Stroke Patients

Reduced cerebral blood flow (CBF) and oxygen delivery to the brain is a common final pathway for lethal and highly debilitating pathologies such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke and cerebral vasospasm. Current therapies are limited in their ability to monitor and increase brain perfusion.

SynCath`s proprietary core technology is based on an ECG-synchronized dynamic ICP-modulation, that is realized via a disposable balloon catheter. The probe is in-dwelling, synchronized to the cardiac cycle and delivered via an EVD like catheter. The underlying physical mechanism is that superimposed fine volume perturbations can generate controlled pressure changes within the cranium, out of which brain compliance and edema severity can be estimated and CBF can be estimated as the natural brain pulsations are translated by analyzing pressure-volume relationship within the skull. Importantly, our technology can augment CBF by synchronized deflate-inflate actions within each cardiac cycle, causing reduction of resistance to arterial inflow, that leads to improved oxygen delivery to brain tissue.

In our R&D large animal models, pertrubation of a small volume (1ml) has been demonstrated in 13 pigs in a brain Edema model resulting in consistent reduction in ICP and in augment blood flow by 50% as well as accurate estimation brain compliance.

SynCath`s system comprises of a portable, bedside patient management console, and a disposable catheter that includes and EVD, an inflatable balloon. This catheter, after it has been placed in the cerebral ventricle, can be operated in several different modes depending on the desired application.

SynCath will initially address patients instrumented with an EVD: 200,000 patients, annually, which dictates an initial market potential of $600 million.

The team is led by Prof Ofer Barnea, CEO and former chairman of BME@TAU and Dr.Omer Doron, CMO, neurosurgery chief resident, and a PhD candidate@TAU along with seasoned enterpeneurs Alon shalev and Rony Shapira.