February 2011

Dr. Kurt Roberts

The CURE/Yale BioHaven Entrepreneurship Series continued February 16 with a presentation by NovaTract Surgical, the New Haven company developing laparoscopic devices based on technology licensed from Yale University. Speaking were Eleanor Tandler, president and CEO, and Dr. Kurt Roberts, scientific founder of the company and an assistant professor of general surgery at Yale University School of Medicine.

NovaTract's devices are developed based on the research and expertise of Dr. Roberts. He has become one of only a dozen surgeons in the U.S. to perform NOTES procedures (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery) and has currently performed the most number of pure NOTES procedures in the country.

NovaTract is developing laparoscopic devices for performing single-port and NOTES procedures. The company is initially focusing on a retraction device for use in the removal of the gallbladder (cholecystectomies) and appendix (appendectomies) — two markets where laparoscopic surgery with 3-4 incisions is currently the gold standard of care. NovaTract's devices are intended to allow general laparoscopic surgeons worldwide to practice Dr. Roberts’ technique using fewer incisions.

gall bladder surgery

In his talk, Dr. Roberts outlined the advantages of accessing the abdominal cavity through a natural orifice when performing surgery. "You don't cut any muscles in the abdominal wall, so you're going to have less pain or no pain after surgery. You're obviously not going to have any scars that are visible on the abdominal wall. And you won't have any wound infections because there are no wounds in the abdominal wall, and you won't develop any hernias from these wounds. Most importantly, if you don't have any pain, you're going to recover faster."

"You usually need three incisions in the abdominal wall to get the appendix out," Dr. Roberts continued. "I envisioned that coming down to a single port. To realize that objective, you need to be able to lift things up and look underneath, so to speak. Like lifting up a carpet when you're cleaning. We needed to create tools with a fulcrum in order to do that. We grab the appendix almost with a lasso and create the fulcrum on the side away from the incision, and then we pull up almost like a puppeteer."

Eleanor Tandler

Eleanor Tandler discussed the decision to create a company to market the instruments developed to realize Dr. Roberts's techniques. "We're focused on the laparoscopic device market. It's a $3 billion market. Within that market there is a single-port device market. The Millennium research group has put out a report estimating that the growth there is pretty significant — over 100 percent per year, reaching over $500 million by 2014."

"It's such a new market that device companies are scrambling to put out enabling products," Ms. Tandler said. "In this type of surgery there's limited maneuverability, because of the multiple instruments involved that share only one or at most a few ports. With our approach, we no longer occupy a port with an instrument to do retraction. That means smaller incisions."

"We hope to have a product on the market within the next 18 months," Ms. Tandler continued, "with a price point of around $200 to $250, which is comparable with the price of traditional laparoscopic devices. The route we would take is 510(k) approval in the U.S. and the CE mark in Europe, and at that point we would hire a VP for sales and marketing."

David Lewin

David Lewin of the Yale Office of Cooperative Research introduced the speakers.

The BioHaven series is presented by CURE and the Yale Office of Cooperative Research, with Wiggin and Dana and PricewaterhouseCoopers as lead sponsors. The series is also sponsored by Elm Street Ventures and the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven, with additional support from the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and the Yale Healthcare & Life Sciences Club.

The company website is at http://www.novatract.com/