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Roger Stern, Stellartech - Medical Device Manufacturing | LSI USA '24

Stellartech is a world leader in the design, development and contract manufacture of sophisticated medical systems utilizing radiofrequency, ultrasound and other energy sources.
Speakers
Roger Stern
Roger Stern
, Stellartech

Roger Stern  0:00  
Roger, Hi, I'm Roger Stern, CEO and president and founder, actually, of Stellartech. And we basically have two parts of the presentation. The first part is going to be a an introduction and an overview of the company, and the second part is going to be a case study of an incubated company started within stellar tech from clinical need all the way through spin out and exit. So we design, develop and manufacture various types of medical devices, but we have a specialty in therapeutic energy sources. So we develop complex class two and three devices. Our customers range from large public companies to emerging startups, and we do, as I mentioned, selective incubation of concept stage companies, and we've been in business for over 35 years. So here's just some examples of the kind of products we do. We do smart disposables, and I say smart because they typically have sensors. They have microchips in them. They may have encryption technology. They may have the ability to store data or parameters to control a procedure, and we also do state of the art capital equipment. Now the three items you see in the pictures there, one is a therapeutic ultrasound device, one is a therapeutic RF device, and one is a therapeutic X ray break of therapy device. Our customers are varied, as I show here. These are some selected companies that we partner with that we make and does have design and manufacture products for. So incubation. So we have incubated a number of companies with inside stellar tech, the first one up there being barracks medical, it was the one I'm going to talk about in more detail, that was started within stellar tech, and then was all the way from concept through spin out and exit. Thermage, which was skin tightening, vitamed prostate ablation, Vesti medical endometrial ablation. Varix medical was varicose vein treatment and vivid vaginal rejuvenation did an IPO. So as I mentioned, we have a deep expertise in energy delivery. We do lots of different types of products. We do low frequency RF products which are used for things like ablation. We do high frequency RF, and we applied that to a cosmetic skin tightening product, pulse field ablation is a newer modality that people are using for a lot of different areas. It's a non thermal energy delivery source that can basically kill tissue through electroporation. We do Hi Fu, high frequency ultrasound, microwave, Steam, vapor, cryogen and X ray. So this is an example for RF energy, where, since we have such a deep expertise in the energy tissue interaction, we're actually able to develop systems with combining electrode technology and treatment parameters of energy and time to do various different types of things. So all the way on the lower left esophageal ablation, we want to keep that energy very superficial, less than a millimeter, then up into cardiac ablation. You want to do things up to a couple of millimeters, maybe even more. For the cosmetic ablation application we did for skin tightening, we basically put the lesion beneath the surface of the skin by cooling and then applying energy, and then all the way up to VT ablation. And finally, the largest lesions that we produce products for are tumors that can be up to five centimeters in diameter. Okay, so now I'll go to the case study of barracks. So barracks was started with the gastroenterologist who came to me and said that he needed to have technology to treat Barrett's esophagus. So barrets esophagus is a precancerous condition in the lining of the esophagus. It starts out as metaplasia, then becomes low grade dysplasia, high grade dysplasia, and ultimately esophageal cancer in a certain percentage of patients, so we started a company to take on this challenge. So the requirements for a clinically successful system was remove the Barrett's cells, remove them from a large surface area, avoid collateral damage, automate delivery and be well tolerated by patients, and ease and use for physicians. The existing technologies did not address this, and the result is patients weren't being treated. So here's the vision, precancerous to dish tissue, balloon based ablation, complete healing with no side effects. So we optimized this for the concept phase. We did high power RF generator, balloon ablation, sizing balloon, and this resulted in the barracks esophageal ablation system, which was fast, user friendly, and worked very, very well. So optimal device led to clinical and market success. So the clinical success is, we have over 90% of patients cured. There's been essentially little to no problem. With the device, and that led to market success, which was 400,000 patients treated, 95% market share, no significant competition and an exit to covid, four 30 million. So our commitment to our customers is using our track record. We have developed multiple first use products, and we're committed to continuing this track record of innovation for our future customers.

 

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