Firm sets sights on China first

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This article was published 20/02/2016 (3745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE principals behind a Winnipeg medical technology company are heading to China to lay the groundwork for what they hope will become a $100-million company in the next five years.

Arterial Stiffness Inc. has developed a low-cost technology that measures plaque levels in arteries, or arterial stiffness, with a finger clip and a digital- signal processor. It compares that score against an age-based population database to determine the patient’s risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

In the last three years, the company has received excellent results in small studies at St. Boniface Hospital and a commercial clinical trial facility out of Minneapolis comparing it to much more expensive and cumbersome technology in the market.

Rather than take the conventional route of achieving regulatory approval in Canada and the U.S. and then exporting the technology elsewhere around the world, they are going to China first. That’s because even if it achieved the necessary approvals from North American regulators, there’s no obvious way for doctors to get paid by U.S. insurance companies or provincial health bodies for using the device and doing the assessment.

So Marshal Ring is heading to China Monday where three groups are already set up to embark on a 1,000-person clinical study to prove data the company has produced in those smaller studies in Winnipeg and Minneapolis.

“The reason we are going into China is that there is an active reimbursement model in China right now,” said Ring, who is acting CEO of ASI. “If you go to a doctor in Winnipeg to test for arterial stiffness, the doctor would not get paid.”

There is no billing code for the procedure in Canada, and the one that exists for insurance companies in the U.S. is so high that even the insurance companies, which are not obligated to honour it, say it’s too high.

ASI was named the life science early- stage company of the year by the Life Sciences Association of Manitoba. Ring, who is the CEO of the Manitoba Technology Accelerator, is marshalling ASI through the commercialization process after the Winnipeg inventor, who continues to be the largest shareholder, left it for MTA to do with it what it could.

It turns out, MTA was able to do a lot, including raising more than $600,000 from its captive angel investor group, Manitoba Knights, three of whom — Steve Kroft, David Asper and Greg Hanson — are on the board.

Next week, Ring will give a 30-minute presentation to doctors from 120 Chinese hospitals. He’ll brief the clinical trial researchers and meet with a distributor who is cued up to get the device in 100 hospitals, pending successful trials. Ring said the trials are expected to be done in six weeks. If successful, they should have a submission in to the China Food and Drug Administration by the summer or early fall. Part of the reason for going to China first is to wait until the North American market is ready. Ring figures that could take 18 months to two years. Currently, there are drug companies involved in Phase 3 clinical studies on therapeutics that appear to have the ability to reduce plaque in arteries.

“Before, if you had high arterial stiffness there was really no course of treatment,” Ring said. “What will happen two years from now when the pharmaceutical companies have a therapeutic available? You better believe they will lobby to have a diagnostic available.”

There has been an exponential increase in research on arterial stiffness in the last 15 years. Research is the leading indicator of market acceptance. On top of that, an Australian company is already in the market with a much more expensive technology, doing the evangelical work with the medical community.

“We’re going to do a fast follower strategy against them,” he said. “There’s lots of risk, uncertainty, hard work and bumps ahead, but we have a good strategy.”

The company figures it has sufficient capital to meet the milestones of proving the device works with the hospital researchers in China.

Ring said he has investors lined up to take the company to the next level of the trials to show the technology works.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca