October 9, 2008 - A report on initial clinical experiences with Prescient Medical’s vProtect Luminal Shield in patients with non–flow-limiting “vulnerable” plaques will be presented at TCT 2008.
Professor Patrick Serruys, director of clinical research and chief of interventional cardiology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will present early findings and describe the rationale and design of the SECRITT I trial, a randomized pilot study of the device in patients with vulnerable plaque.
“Vulnerable plaques can rupture suddenly, and with catastrophic results. If the vProtect Luminal Shield can gently stabilize these plaques, as it is designed to do, it will be a breakthrough, a paradigm shift in interventional cardiology,” said Prof. Serruys. The presentation, “Progress with a Vulnerable Plaque Shield and a ‘Secret’ Trial,” is scheduled for 4:18 pm, Monday Oct. 13, in room 152A of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Juan Granada, M.D., will present details on the innovative design of the vProtect Luminal Shield; its self-expanding and biocompatible design reportedly make it a potentially attractive alternative to traditional stents in established indications. Dr. Granada will give an update on the ongoing first-in-human study of the Shield.
Prescient Medical is also spearheading an effort to better identify and characterize vulnerable plaques, a project that strongly complements the vProtect Luminal Shield development program. The vPredict platform is based on Raman spectroscopy, a highly sensitive technique that is used in scores of critical non-clinical applications. New results related to the use of the vPredict Optical Catheter System for characterizing vulnerable plaques will be presented at TCT by Guillermo Tearney, M.D., Ph.D., of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The vPredict Optical Catheter System can detect the spectroscopic ‘fingerprints’ of compounds in the plaque. Our task is to correlate the spectra we obtain to histology, so that we can classify a plaque, and ultimately assess its risk of rupture in vivo, based on the results of the Optiography Scan,” explained Dr. Tearney.
Recent preclinical results with the vPredict Optical Catheter System will be available through the duration of TCT 2008 via e-poster kiosks.
For more information: www.prescientmedical.com