Bridge to Life, Ltd., a leading global supplier of organ preservation solutions and organ perfusion technologies, and Tevosol, Inc., a clinical stage medical device startup, today announced their merger to develop and commercialize groundbreaking new products for the organ transplantation community. The arrangement includes Bridge to Life’s significant financial commitment to manufacture, trial, and launch Tevosol’s portable ex-vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) machine and normothermic organ preservation platform.
“We are pleased to welcome Tevosol into our growing organization and to champion their bold new approach to EVLP,” said Bridge to Life CEO Stevan Schweighardt. “Together we can fulfill the great promise of this emerging clinical practice—and we’re already working on exciting projects beyond lung transplantation and a host of other possibilities for the future. This strategic investment exemplifies our mission to serve the transplantation community by delivering a complete range of innovative organ preservation technologies.”
Bridge to Life is also actively developing cold perfusion technologies for the kidney, liver, and heart. With nearly 1,000 candidates on the US lung transplant waiting list, the merger with Tevosol provides a new platform to increase the availability of donor lungs.
Tevosol, co-founded in 2015 by Drs. Darren Freed and Jayan Nagendran, developed the EVOSS™ Ex-Vivo Organ Support System to preserve, assess, and reclaim donor organs and completed its first human lung transplants in 2019 with results published in Nature Communications [doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19581-4]. EVOSS Lung pivotal clinical trials are scheduled to begin in 2021.
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“Partnering with Bridge to Life, with their extensive global reach, robust technical support coverage, and clinical education programs, will allow Tevosol to reach more patients with this lifesaving technology,” said Freed.
With this new partnership, Dr. Freed becomes Chief Scientific Officer and Dr. Nagendran assumes the Chief Medical Officer position at Bridge to Life. Ron Mills remains CEO of Tevosol, a d/b/a subsidiary Bridge to Life (Canada). EVOSS product research and development, engineering and design, and assembly and packaging are wholly based in Edmonton for worldwide export.
“We’re eager to put this creative partnership to efficient use and boost our speed to market,” said Mills, “and we’re confident our machines can help procurement organizations deliver more donor organs to more surgeons for more lifesaving transplants.”
Source: Biospace
