The no-stick expertise invented by Professor Kripa Varanasi and David Smith SM ’11, initially commercialized as LiquiGlide in 2012, went viral for its uncanny skill to make supplies that persist with their containers — assume ketchup, cosmetics, and toothpaste — slide out with ease.
Now, the corporate that introduced you Colgate no-stick toothpaste is shifting into the medical house, and the functions may enhance thousands and thousands of lives. The corporate, which not too long ago rebranded because the Arnasi Group, has developed an formidable plan to launch three new biomedical merchandise over the subsequent 4 years.
The primary of these merchandise, referred to as Revel, is a deodorizing lubricant designed for ostomy pouches, that are utilized by people to gather bodily waste after digestive system surgical procedures. As much as 1 million folks depend on such pouches in the US. Ostomy pouches have to be emptied a number of occasions per day, and points ensuing from sticking or clogging could cause embarrassing, time-consuming conditions for the folks counting on them.
Arnasi’s deodorizing lubricant can stop clogging and simplify the ostomy pouch cleansing course of. In contrast to different choices accessible, one software of its lubricant works for the complete day, the Arnasi crew says, they usually designed a single unit dose that matches in your pocket for added comfort.
An ostomy pouch “considerably impacts an individual’s way of life,” Varanasi says. “They should maintain it clear, and they should use it always. We’re fixing an important downside whereas serving to folks by giving their dignity and life again.”
Revel, Arnasi’s FDA-registered product, formally launched this month, and it has already acquired promising suggestions from nurses and sufferers.
Margaret is a nurse who depends on an ostomy pouch herself and cares for sufferers who want them after receiving colostomies and ileostomies. She acquired samples of Revel at a current convention and says it may dramatically enhance each her and her sufferers’ lives.
“These pouches have to be emptied often, and generally that’s very tough to do,” she says. “This specific product makes every part slide out with none issues in any respect, and it’s an exquisite enchancment. It additionally lasts lengthy sufficient to empty the pouch three to 4 occasions, which is nice since you don’t have to hold a bunch of these things round.”
Margaret’s expertise echoes suggestions Arnasi’s crew has heard from many others.
“After we confirmed it to the nurses, they had been blown away with the product,” says Arnasi CEO Dan Salain. “They requested us to get this product out to the market as quick as we may, and in order that’s what we’re doing.”
Arnasi’s subsequent medical merchandise will probably be used to stop biofilm and bacterial infections brought on by implants and catheters, and also will assist folks with cystic fibrosis.
“We wish to create merchandise that basically assist folks,” Salain says. “Something that’s implantable within the physique, whether or not it’s a catheter, a hip, knee, or joint alternative, a breast implant, a bladder sling — these issues lend themselves to our expertise.”
From packages to sufferers
Varanasi initially developed Arnasi’s liquid-impregnated floor expertise with Smith, Arnasi’s co-founder and present CTO, when Smith was a graduate scholar in Varanasi’s lab. The analysis was initially funded by the MIT Power Initiative and the MIT Deshpande Middle to work on solid-liquid interfaces with broad functions for vitality, water, and extra.
“There’s this elementary friction constraint referred to as the no-slip boundary situation between a liquid and a stable, so by creating a brand new floor by which we are able to infuse a liquid that’s much less viscous, we are able to now get the product to simply slide on surfaces,” Varanasi explains. “That aha second meant we may get round a elementary constraint in fluid dynamics.”
Nonetheless, sticky surfaces are in all places, and the scientific co-founders needed to resolve the place to use their expertise first. Shortly after the invention, Varanasi was at house attempting to resolve on the very best software when he noticed his spouse throughout the kitchen desk attempting to get honey out of a bottle. It was one other aha second.
Quickly after, Varanasi’s crew entered the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competitors. The competitors — and the corresponding movies of ketchup and different supplies sliding out their bottles with ease — created a media storm and a frenzy of consideration.
“The press exploded,” Varanasi says. “For 3 months, my cellphone didn’t cease ringing. My group web site crashed. There was numerous market pull and in response, we based the corporate.”
Arnasi, nonetheless working as LiquiGlide, licensed the mental property from MIT’s Expertise Licensing Workplace and ultimately signed massive offers with a number of the world’s greatest shopper packaged items corporations, who used it to create merchandise like absolutely recyclable toothpaste.
“There’s a lot waste simply because we won’t get the entire product, be it meals, cosmetics, or medical merchandise, out of containers,” Varanasi says. “Fifty billion-plus packages are bought yearly, and 5 to 10 % of product is left behind on common. So, you may think about the CO2 footprint of the wasted product. And despite the fact that numerous that is in recyclable packaging, they will’t be recycled as a result of you must wash out all of the product. The water footprint of that is big, to not point out the wasted product.”
Whereas all of that was occurring, Arnasi’s crew was additionally wanting into the biomedical house. As an example, Varanasi’s lab beforehand confirmed the expertise might be used to stop occlusion from blood clots and thrombosis and reduce biofilm formation, amongst different functions.
After learning the business and talking with sufferers and nurses, Arnasi realized a greater lubricant for ostomy pouches may enhance thousands and thousands of individuals’s lives.
“Stool accumulates in these pouches outdoors of individuals’s our bodies, and they should empty it as much as eight occasions a day,” explains Brienne Engel, Arnasi’s director of enterprise growth. “That course of has numerous challenges related to it: It may be tough to empty, leaving numerous mass behind, it takes a very long time to empty, so you may spend a very long time in a restroom attempting to filter your pouch, after which there’s one thing referred to as pancaking that may push the pouch off the [surgical opening], introducing points like leakage, odor, and failure of the ostomy pouching system.”
Ostomy and past
Arnasi’s ostomy lubricant, Revel, is the primary non-water-based resolution available on the market, and as-yet unpublished third-party testing has proven it permits for sooner, extra full pouch drainage, together with different advantages.
“A whole lot of the prevailing manufacturers deal with their shoppers like sufferers, however what we’ve discovered is that they wish to be handled like folks and have a shopper expertise,” Salain says. “The magic we noticed with our toothpaste product was folks obtained this wonderful shopper expertise out of it, and we needed to create the identical factor with Revel.”
Now Arnasi is planning to make use of its expertise in medical merchandise for pores and skin infections, cystic fibrosis, and in implantable catheters and joint replacements. Arnasi’s crew believes these final two use circumstances may stop thousands and thousands of lethal infections.
“When persons are getting hemodialysis catheters, they’ve a 33 % danger of creating infections, and people who do get these infections have a 25 % likelihood of dying from them,” Engel says. “Taking our underlying expertise and making use of it to catheters, for instance, imparts anti-biofilm properties and in addition stop issues like thrombosis, or blood clotting on the surface of those catheters, which is an issue in and of itself but in addition gives an area for micro organism to seed.”
Finally, Varanasi’s crew is balancing making progress on its biomedical functions whereas exploring different avenues for its expertise — together with vitality, manufacturing, and agriculture — to maximise its influence on the world.
“We consider this as an organization with many corporations inside it due to all of the totally different areas that it might influence. Liquid-solid interfaces are ubiquitous, viscous merchandise are in all places, and deploying this expertise to unravel tough issues has been a dream,” Varanasi says. “It’s an awesome instance of how MIT expertise can be utilized for the advantage of humankind.”
