VENTRIX

Ventrix Inc. was founded in 2009 to spinout the research of Professor Karen Christman (Bioengineering) and her graduate students (Jen Singelyn, Jessica DeQuach, Michael Salvatore). The technology license agreement was formalized in FY2011. Dr. Christman’s work has developed promising results for the treatment and repair of cardiac tissue damage. A departure from current approaches, this innovation is a hydrogel that treats damaged tissue by providing a restorative scaffold on which new cells c... an grow. This hydrogel, VentriGel, is made from cardiac connective tissue that is stripped of heart muscle cells through a cleansing process, freeze-dried and milled into powder form, and then liquefied into a fluid that can be easily injected into the heart. Upon reaching body temperature, the liquid turns into a semi-solid, porous gel that encourages cells to repopulate areas of damaged cardiac tissue and to preserve heart function. The hydrogel forms a scaffold to repair the tissue and possibly provides biochemical signals that prevent further deterioration in the surrounding tissues.More