Device entrepreneur extraordinaire Thomas Fogarty, MD formed Vascular Architects Inc. in 1997 with a very specific goal: to increase the patency rate of blood vessels in patients with peripheral vascular disease. Some eight million people in the US alone are living with partially or totally occluded peripheral arteries, a number that will grow with the aging of the population. While various surgical or interventional procedures are successful at reopening vessels, their effectiveness is limited by restenosis, or vessel reocclusion, in the months following the procedure. Stents are effective at treating two of the causes of restenosis: elastic recoil, as the treated vessel returns to its original dimensions, and vascular remodeling, a progressive reduction in vessel diameter. But stents may actually exacerbate the third cause, intimal hyperplasia, in which interaction between exposed metal in the stent and the vessel wall triggers a wound healing response, leading to a proliferation of cells at the treatment site.
Fogarty recruited Bruce Barclay as President and CEO in March 2000. A patent attorney and former SVP and deputy counsel at Guidant Corp. , this is Barclay's first time...
