demonstrated that the bleeding would
stop, and in most cases it stopped quickly
enough to prevent hemostatic shock and
even death.
Stasilon went out to the troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq, which is what Fischer envisioned when he created it. But, it
also is being used in many other areas —
from the operating room to the sidelines
of Carolina football games, where the Tar
Heels have been using Stasilon for abrasions and nosebleeds. The department of
surgery in UNC Hospitals was one of the
first centers to begin using Stasilon. Dr.
Chip Rich, chief of trauma and critical
care at UNC hospitals, as well as medical
director for the Chapel Hill fire department, said he was intrigued by the textile
and its potential benefits.
“We were immediately attracted to its
similarity to gauze — the process for
using this textile is similar to what we’re
already used to,” Rich said. “That’s very
different from other hemostatic products
on the market. That’s part of the reason
we’ve embraced it — it’s conceptually
easy to use. We were intrigued by that. It
enables us to begin using it more effectively. It’s also very easy to teach people to
use it — open it and put pressure on.”
Rich says he has been pleased enough
to use Stasilon for more complicated procedures. He began using it like gauze and
now plans to use it to stop bleeding during complex excisions when burn
patients’ skin has to be removed. Rich has
even seen Stasilon’s usefulness to the
everyday consumer.
“I have the stuff around my house —
my son has nosebleeds enough that he
asks for it by name. It’s the only thing
he’ll use. My neighbor cut the tip of her
finger off — we used it on that.”
But getting that idea from the lab to
the consumer market and other fields
where it is being used was an involved
process. Previous inventive endeavors in
hemostasis led Fischer to take a night
course through the business school meant
to prepare scientists to undertake the
commercialization process involved in getting a product through the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration process.
“I was and still am just a real nerdy academic researcher,” Fischer said. “This is a
very capital-intensive thing. It’s the kind of
thing companies do and universities don’t
do too well because it’s a little bit away
from the academic research type. … The
most important thing I learned in that
course was that I was not going to do this
myself — that I was not a businessman.”
Fortunately for Fischer, the final exam
of the business class involved presenting
technologies to the local business community. Entrepreneur Stan Eskridge Jr. ’ 65
was impressed by Fischer’s developments,
and the two founded Entegrion, a life sciences company. Based in Research Triangle Park, Entegrion enabled the commercialization of Stasilon.
“The University is about research, and
it gets a lot of funding to do all this wonderful research, and then they’ve got this
wonderful hospital and medical school
where they’ve got great clinical applications,” Eskridge said. “What the University
then focused on for a number of years was
how to take the research and then bring it
back into the clinical part of the program.
What’s missing are commercialization
vehicles like this company.”
Entegrion is partly owned by UNC
and pays royalties to UNC when products
are sold. Eskridge, who also has been the
company’s CEO since it was founded, said
that the partnership between the University and Entegrion plays on the strength
of both and benefits all.
Entegrion provides the commercial
part of the equation, taking products into
clinical trials, the medical school and the
hospital. The University reduces Entegrion’s expenses — Eskridge estimates
$30 million to $40 million in savings —
by picking up the bill on the clinical work
done at UNC.
“There are just multiple levels where
this benefits the University as that cycle
continues — basic research into applied
research product development into clinical
trials, which leads to more basic research,
which leads to more product development
into more clinical trials,” Eskridge said.
“It’s a wonderful cyclical scenario.”
— Juliann Neher
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