Accumed Systems Awarded Million-Dollar Grant for Development of Diagnostic Catheter System.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Accumed Systems, Inc. recently was awarded a two-year, $1.2 million Phase 2 SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Accumed will use the money to complete product development of a catheter to improve the diagnosis of patients with atherosclerosis. The catheter is designed to aid physicians in identifying those lesions (or plaques) in the patients' arteries that are biologically active. Such lesions are considered the primary cause of sudden heart attacks that annually kill 19 million people worldwide (www.vulnerableplaque.org).

"During the first phase of this project we successfully demonstrated the safety of our product in a small number of patients," explained principal investigator Joseph Korotko. "This continuation grant will allow us to conduct a larger 100-patient study at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak MI to further validate the performance of the system and the clinical value of the diagnostic data it produces."

About Accumed Systems, Inc.

Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., this thirteen-year-old medical device company develops and commercializes innovative products for interventional cardiology and other therapeutic areas. Accumed sells its products directly to customers and also licenses them to larger medical device companies that provide broader access to the market. For more information, visit www.accumedsystemsinc.com.