art technology

A Stent That Dismantles Aids Natural Healing
“The holy grail is a disappearing stent that is both hemocompatible and biocompatible, so that there is little or no thrombus or inflammation” says Antoine Lafont, MD, PhD, Head of Interventional Cardiology at Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris. “The key characteristics of ART’s next-generation of stents are that they are made of non-aggressive material, have a transitory presence, and facilitate natural artery-wound-healing and remodeling. Early evidence leads me to believe that the Company is moving in the right direction.”

ART’s stents provide the requisite initial mechanical scaffolding to resist acute recoil, according to Dr. J. F. Cornhill, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford. “Equally important, as ART’s stents dismantle due to bioresorbability, the possibility of arterial remodeling returns to the artery.” Dr. Michel Vert, former Director of the Center of Research for Artificial Polymers at the French research institute CNRS, notes that ART’s polymer has been shown to be safe while triggering only a minimal inflammatory response.

Dismantling. Dr. Vert emphasizes that “the most important portion of the degradation process is the dismantling event—not total disappearance of the stent all at once. “Dismantling, or the gradual loss of physical integrity, is the process that allows the arterial remodeling process to proceed,” adds Dr. Vert. “The ART platform provides the added benefit of total disappearance over time—one to two years or less, if needed—and in a safe manner.”