Vascudyne will develop vascular medical devices offering enhanced performance on the back of a stem cell-grown tissue with similar biological and mechanical qualities to the native equivalent.

University of Minnesota Technology Commercialization, the university’s tech transfer office, has formally unveiled US-based biotech spinout Vascudyne to develop medical devices and therapeutics driven by regenerative technology.
Founded in 2014, Vascudyne is making products that use decellularised collagenous tissue grown from human fibroblast cells that closely mimic the biological and mechanical qualities of native tissue, enabling it to regenerate and grow with the patient.
Vascudyne’s pipeline includes two medical devices – a small-diameter vascular conduit designed to restore blood flow affected by diseased arteries, and a valve installed through transcatheter surgery to improve function on the right side of the heart.
Both projects are expected to undergo preclinical studies in 2019 before Vascudyne submits regulatory applications for early-stage clinical trials.
Vascudyne intends to focus on optimising its operations as it searches for other medical device designs that deploy the engineered tissue technology, which advances work led by Robert Tranquillo, head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, with assistance from Zeeshan Syedai and Lee Meier, both of whom worked in Tranquillo’s lab at the time.
Vascudyne previously raised $1.9m of equity funding from undisclosed investors in March 2017, according to a regulatory filing.