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Tre Welch, founder and CEO of Fort Worth-based Trémedics, placed bronze and was awarded $25,000 this week in the fifth annual Stanford Children’s Health Pediatric Innovation Showcase.
Trémedics is a leader in bioresorbable stent technology for congenital heart disease in children who need devices that resorb within their body as they grow.
In September, Trémedics’ stent IllusicorTM, developed for infants (30 days) to children up to 14 years old, received “Breakthrough Device” designation from the FDA. The designation is granted to novel medical devices that have the potential to provide more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions.
No marketed stent is approved for aortic narrowing for infants to age 14.
“We are very excited for this win and receiving further validation of our stent technology from a panel of experts and investors in pediatric medical devices,” Welch says in a statement. “We were selected from a cohort of 50 companies. This win enables us to move one step closer to clinical trials and motivates us for further innovation in unmet pediatric clinical needs.”
Welch is a client of TechFW, the nonprofit that assists and mentors entrepreneurs in launching and growing technology companies “to bring economic prosperity to Fort Worth and to improve lives around the world through the advancement of technology.”
The idea for the stent began as Welch was conducting dissertation research at UT Arlington in 2005. He developed a resorble stent that gradually breaks down and showed comparable strength to metal stents.
Currently, metal stents are implanted into these young patients and require repeated revascularization procedures for the stents to grow with the patients. Trémedics’ technology utilizes a minimal invasive surgical procedure for stent delivery and permits vessel growth as the stent resorbs in the body. Ultimately, this will reduce the number of revascularization procedures.