Week 2 – Bio-Spun® - The Swiss Army Knife of Biomaterials

Hope you all are doing well.  As you might have heard, we recently announced that the name for our technology, which we call Bio-Spun, is now a registered trademark (Bio-Spun®).  This was exciting news as it provides the company with a strong marketing tool to bring brand recognition to our electrospun materials.  Sometimes it’s very easy to overlook what it has taken to get to this point.  Over 22 years of hard work, trial and error, some promising results, more trial and error and then finally being able to develop consistent materials.  What I always tell people when they ask about how do you make something whose structure is so randomized (picture spider webs thrown together) is that we are making a controlled random structure.  I know it sounds like an odd description, but the fiber diameters have a similar range, the space between the fibers (known as pore size) have a similar range and the thickness is consistent between runs.  As I say, controlled randomness.  If you look at the structure that holds the body’s cells, it looks very similar.  Must be something to this randomness thing.    

It would be good to give you some history of how the “Bio-Spun” name came to be.  I have always been interested in history of how things were named (i.e. places, streets, land).  Just spoke with a company that was named after the co-founder’s grandmother.  The final name of the company was changes by a happy accident when an unsuspecting customer mistakenly added the word “Medical” before her name.  I do not think we’ve provided the history behind the name BioSurfaces and Bio-Spun®.  The name BioSurfaces came to me when I was traveling on an airplane, and we were thinking about the possibility of starting a company.  I remember thinking that from all of my previous research working on improving biomaterials implanted in the body, that it was about two major things: the biology of surrounding tissue and blood interacting with foreign material surfaces.  The concept of BioSurfaces was born.  At this point, we were just thinking about changing the surface and electrospinning was just becoming a material that we were beginning to explore.  After all, I first learned about electrospinning being used for chemical warfare headgear for soldiers.  Wasn’t quite sure this would work for us.  Little did I know.  Maybe the company name would have been different.   Many groups do not know we make electrospun materials because of our name.  They have grown to learn that we do and we have learned a lot over the years.  The name “Bio-Spun®” has its origins in the company’s first three letters and electrospun materials.  There was another group looking to trademark this name but they ended up abandoning it.  It took a while but it was worth the wait. 

The title of today’s blog is a very bold statement.  Not one that I make lightly. I think that a Swiss army knife has so many uses and this is what I equate our Bio-Spun®.  To be honest, I have lost track of the number of applications that we have developed using our Bio-Spun® materials, from medical devices and benchtop tools to cosmetics actives delivery.  That statement is not made as a boast.  We have really developed A LOT of different uses for the material.  For example, we recently spoke with the company that I previously mentioned.  They were saying that some of their customers were looking for ways to image materials using radiopaque agents.  I told them that we had done this before and we have some data.  As I went back to retrieve the data, I realized that we did this work back in 2014, over 12 years ago.  In so many ways, it is frustrating that we have done so much and yet we are not as known as we should be.  My fault for thinking like a scientist, believing that with good science that business and investment would follow.  I am such a dummy (I would like to say worse but I’ll keep it PG)!  We have been successful over the years obtaining grants for our research, which means that our peers in science saw the benefits of our technology.  Doesn’t always translate to the business world.    

Bio-Spun® made its maiden voyage to make an artificial artery.  It is one of the devices that is near and dear to my heart.  This is the area that I started my career in.  We had to overcome a lot of different challenges.  The material was too stiff (was told this by my former boss just as we are starting the company – that was a little startling), device should have some flexibility, locally delivering one or more drugs to prevent different complications would be nice and ability to be formed into various complex and narrow configurations.  You can see that these types of characteristics were for just one device.  Now, apply these types of needs (and more) to other types of devices such as a perianal fistula plugs, stent coatings, sutures and cell chamber delivery devices.  These were just for devices we were making internally.  Now add on all the work we were doing for partners and customers, from coating cardiovascular devices such as stents, septal wall occluders and atrial appendage closure devices and creating a neuromodulation device to developing radiopaque materials and sewing cuffs.  We then expanded Bio-Spun® into benchtop tools, using the scaffold to grow human tissues.  Bio-Spun®, while it has been around for a while, is just getting ready to soar.  It has been patiently waiting for its time to shine and that time is now.  We are working hard to make sure Bio-Spun® will become a household name.  Time will tell!    

Matt