Nanoflex Robotics installs first robot for vascular interventions in the USA

Shortly after having received ISO certification for its magnetically controlled catheter, Nanoflex Robotics has now supplied its first robotics systems to an organization in the USA. According to a press release, this has been installed in the testing facility located at the Jacobs Institute, a non-profit innovation center for medical devices that forms part of the Canon Stroke and Vascular Research Center of the University at Buffalo in New York State. The remote-controlled robotics system from Nanoflex, a company founded in 2021, will be used there for usability testing, in-vivo studies, training and demonstrations.

The robotics system developed by the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich uses a compact magnetic field generator and a navigation control unit to guide ultra-flexible devices through the body. Its first application will focus on the mechanical removal of blood clots from the brain of a patient that has suffered a stroke.

With the Nanoflex robotics system, interventions can either be performed at the patient’s bedside or from thousands of kilometers away. Matt Curran, CEO of Nanoflex, is convinced that remote robotics has the potential to “to transform surgical outcomes and benefit patients, by enabling greater and earlier access to critical treatments”.

Robotic neurovascular interventions “undoubtably” represent the future of healthcare, as Adnan Siddiqui, CEO and CMO of the Jacobs Institute, explains. Siddiqui is also Professor of Neurosurgery at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Science of the University at Buffalo. “We are delighted to work with Nanoflex Robotics to prove this concept”, he adds. ce/mm