A tiny device holds great promise to destroy blood clots and create the beginnings of a whole new biomedical technology industry for the state of North Dakota.

The device is the focus of a project that is the result of a successful partnership which links the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences with the engineering schools at UND and North Dakota State University (NDSU), the City of Minot, and Enova Medical Technologies (EMT), a biomedical device manufacturing firm based in White Bear Lake, MN.

Centers of Excellence Commission invests $2.5 million to begin biomedical device research and commercialization

The project is funded by a $2.5 million grant from the state of North Dakota’s Centers of Excellence Commission.  It is one of six projects funded last fall by the Centers of Excellence Commission (CEC), and the first involving the UND medical school.  The first $20 million in CEC money was distributed in 2005.

The three-year project aims to develop and commercialize a device that will dissolve and suction out clots from blood vessels in the brain and limbs.  The plan calls for the engineering schools to design and miniaturize the device, for which a prototype has been created by Enova; the UND medical school will oversee testing through animal and clinical trials, and the manufacturing of the device would be based in Minot.  If successful, the partnership has the potential to create a new manufacturing operation with 200 or more employees in Minot by 2012.
Additional funds have been committed by the city of Minot, a community in north-central North Dakota. Enova executives are seeking investors to support the project.

“The grant covers two major aspects that are complementary,” says Joshua Wynne, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., executive associate dean at the UND medical school.  “The development, testing, commercialization and manufacture of a biomedical device complement the development of a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. None of the members of the North Dakota University System can do this by themselves.”

UND has long wanted to create such a degree program, according to John Watson, Ph.D., dean of the UND School of Engineering and Mines, but funding hasn’t been available until now.

Once the center is established, researchers and students will begin developing and commercializing other technologies, either internally or in cooperation with other corporate partners.