Venture Capital Firms

Undisclosed Investors Invest $2.5 Million in ALung Technologies

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ALung Technologies announced today that it has raised $2.5 million in funding from its existing investors, who are not disclosed to the public. Proceeds from this funding round will go to fund ALung’s international endeavors, which include the company’s German and Indian clinical trials.

ALung Technologies is a company that is developing the new age of artificial lungs and work to advance the cures of respiratory diseases. Currently the company is developing a new platform, known as the HemoLung System that is designed to aid or even replace the ventilator for respiratory patients. Ventilators are usually used on patients who have respiratory failure and what the HemoLung System is designed to do is to eliminate all the invasive techniques that a current ventilator requires. Furthermore, when a patient is on the HemoLung System, he will not need to be sedated; allowing him to be awake, alert, and able to eat. Furthermore, the traditional ventilator can cause pneumonia and other dangerous complications that are associated with ventilators, which makes a respiratory patient spend a long time in the intensive care unit. The HemoLung System can eliminate all that too, because it also allows for artificial respiration without injury to the trachea or the larynx. Furthermore, the company has already advanced the development of the HemoLung System and plans to start clinical trials this fall.

The HemoLung System is an innovative system that does all of the above mentioned by use of a smaller catheter which is inserted in either the jugular or femoral vein, mimicking the process used in acute kidney dialysis. The difference is that the catheters deliver the blood to a mechanical lung which removes the carbon dioxide and replaces it with oxygen, much like the real lung does. The catheters allow for a much easier artificial respiration process than the cumbersome ventilator which requires a tube that is surgically inserted into the trachea.

According to ALung’s chairman and CEO, Peter M. DeComo; the potential that ALung Technologies has to improve the quality of care for severe respiratory patients is tremendous. The company’s HemoLung System will greatly reduce time in the ICU and dangerous complications associated with regular ventilators and further improving the patient’s care by allowing him to be alert and the most important thing, less time in the ICU also means greatly reduced healthcare costs.

In the United States today, there is an estimated 450,000 patients who are currently being ventilated as a result to chronic and acute respiratory failure. Furthermore, with the current cost of ICU hospitalization being estimated to range in between $5000 to $7000, the cost of respiratory patients can be overwhelming. Furthermore, the clinical trials that ALung’s patented HemoLung System prototype will determine whether the HemoLung System will replace or be a supplement to conventional ventilation.

As far as the company’s COO, Nick Kuhn, is concerned; currently the team at ALung Technologies is very enthusiastic with the current near-term clinical trials of this new system. Furthermore, the HemoLung System is currently undergoing clinical trials in both Germany and India.

For more information about ALung Technologies, click here.

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