With FDA clearance, StimMed ready to put up 'for sale' sign

StimMed leaders believe they've done all the hard work to prepare their company for acquisition by a larger medical company. It's about time to find out.

The technology – a sock which uses electricity to boost patient blood flow – was developed for more than a decade by local doctors James Czyrny and Robert Kaplan.

In recent years, StimMed brought on an experienced team, incuding former Niagara Blower co-owner Peter Demakos as CEO and local biotech commercialization expert Gregg Gellman as COO (Gellman is also COO of Garwood Medical Devices and director of regulatory affairs at 22nd Century Group).

The company completed a $1 million financing round late in 2016 from local investors, including the Buffalo Capital Partners group led by Scott Friedman. StimMed has received two U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals for its product, the most recent of which gives it a wide range of potential uses.

"this expanded indication for use from FDA increases StimMed ability to provide a cost effective portable medical device that enhances positive clinical outcomes and improves patient care for people at risk or poor circulation and venous thrombosis,” Gellman said.

And finally, StimMed is close to finalizing a prototype for the electric part of the sock (the cloth part is being produced locally by Tapecon), which is expected to be ready sometime this year.

What's left, according to the long-term plans of company leaders, is to begin the process of finding a larger company with the sales, manufacturing and distribution capacity that StimMed will never have.

It's an interesting test case in the small world of Buffalo biomedical efforts, where companies have approached the market in a number of ways. Athenexhas broken through with hundreds of millions in private investment, an initial public offering and state-subsidized factory plans. MimiVax and Garwood are hoping to attract larger partners while holding out options for going it alone, Athenex-style.

StimMed has been developed specifically for an acquisition, with a marketable technology that proposes to disrupt the way doctors currently promote blood flow in patients.

"We have a high level of confidence that somebody is going to buy this," Demakos said.