Daniel Teitelbaum, MD and Jonathan Luntz, Ph.D.
In the US 20,000 patients suffer from short bowel syndrome. The decreased bowel length, results in insufficient nutrient absorption necessitating IV or parenteral nutrition (PN) as a mainstay of treatment. For many patients, PN is the only long term solution for this condition, and severely hampers both quality of life and life span. Patients experience intense hunger, have limited activity due to lengthy infusions, suffer potentially fatal infections and sepsis, liver failure, and blood clots. Interventions include surgical procedures to lengthen the bowel, bowel transplant, and administration of growth hormone. These therapies are costly invasive, and result in inconsistent bowel length/absorption increases.
Pediatric surgeon Daniel Teitelbaum MD, mechanical engineering research scientist Jonathan Luntz Ph.D., and their colleagues have developed a non invasive and simple device placed in the bowel that uses mechanical stimulus to encourage tissue growth and lengthening of the bowel. Studies in animals with this device have been encouraging and show a lengthening of the bowel by greater than 50% over 2 weeks. If the same results can be achieved in humans, a substantial number of patients could be weaned off PN. As such, the MEND device may prove to be more effective than the surgical options and with far fewer complications. The device is likely to become a first intervention for a subset of patients and could be used with or without growth hormone treatment.
During the year of participation in the Coulter program, the MEND team will build on their previous successful animal studies. They will generate prototypes incorporating critical refinements for safety, and validate the new design in animal models. Furthermore, safety innovations to the device such as the dilating fenestrated mesh attachment and the atraumatic tip could find utility in other gastrointestinal and catheter devices.
Links to technology at UM Tech Transfer: Atraumatic tip, MEND 1, MEND 2 or email Thomas Marten ([email protected]) for more information.