Mauna Kea Technologies SAS
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Mauna Kea Technologies is developing Cellvizio, a tiny confocal laser microscopy system small enough to be inserted into the colon, the urinary tract, the lungs, deep in the brain, and other small spaces in the body. Today, every procedure in gastroenterology--a biopsy or a therapeutic intervention-- is already the second, third, or later step in a process that becomes cumbersome simply because clinicians can't get the relevant information from the first step, which is endoscopy. That's where Cellvizio brings advantages, providing a real-time, in vivo microscopic image of tissue to properly characterize it, so a gastroenterologist can both determine and efficiently carry out the proper course of treatment for a particular patient. Cellvizio's most compelling initial applications include the diagnosis of biliary strictures, Barrett's Esophagus, and colonoscopy.