Enhancing Vascular Healing: Attacking the Root Causes of Vascular Surgical and Interventional Complications

Pervasis is committed to improving outcomes following common vascular surgical and interventional procedures by addressing the fundamental reasons why patients experience post-operative complications.

Our novel, biologically active treatments are designed to enhance the body’s natural ability to recover from the trauma of common vascular procedures, beginning in the acute care setting. We believe that harnessing and enhancing the body’s own mechanisms for promoting a proper healing response will have a positive impact on patient care, and will further extend the benefits of today’s most promising medical procedures to many who do not achieve optimal outcomes today.

Our lead development programs are focused on two areas of intense need: improving arteriovenous access procedures for hemodialysis patients, and reducing the longer-term problems that limit the success of angioplasty or stent implants for peripheral arterial disease.

The needs are clear:

Arteriovenous access

  • Up to 60 percent of all arteriovenous (AV) grafts require re-intervention after one year.1,2
  • AV access failure is the most common reason for hospitalization among hemodialysis patients3 and can lead to anemia, infection, weight loss, jaundice, prolonged bleeding, and other serious complications.
  • To reduce the need for re-intervention, Pervasis is developing Vascugel®, which could improve outcomes by helping to regulate the body’s healing response following the creation of an AV graft or fistula.

Peripheral arterial disease

  • Forty to 60 percent of patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) suffer from restenosis within one year of receiving an angioplasty4. Stents are used less frequently to treat PAD and are rarely used at or below the knee due to issues of stent fracture and poor outcomes. Even drug-eluting stents have yet to demonstrate effectiveness in large, well-controlled trials.
  • The complications associated with PAD are severe, including heart attack, stroke, and amputation. In the U.S., over 150,000 PAD-related amputations are performed annually5.
  • Pervasis is developing PVS-10200 which could help reestablish healthy vascular in patients with PAD by directly targeting the underlying biological causes that lead to intimal hyperplasia and restenosis.

 

 

1 Dixon et al. DAC Study Group. Effect of dipyridamole plus aspirin on hemodialysis graft patency. N Engl J Med. 2009; 360: 2191-2201.

2 Hayashi et al. Vascular access for hemodialysis. Nat Clin Pract Nephrol 2006; 2: 504-513.

3 Castner D. Recommendations for tracking arteriovenous access complications using a charting-by-exception model. Anna Journal, 1998; 25(4): 393-396.

4 Farraj et al. One-year outcomes for recanalization of long superficial femoral artery chronic total occlusions with the Viabahn stent graft. Journal of Invasive Cardiology, 2009; 21(6):278-281.

5 The Sage Group Market Research Report (2009). Peripheral arterial disease: New pharmaceutical therapies to treat intermittent claudication symptoms, prevent ischemic events and to induce angiogenesis.