The Hindu Business Line : Indigenous versions of stents undergoing tests

JUST under three years after their global launch, drug-coated stents developed indigenously and at comparably lower rates are expected to be commercially available in the country by the end of 2004 or early 2005.

Relisys Medical Devices and CARE Hospital cardiologists have developed Taxol-eluting stent, that would complete clinical evaluation at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi; Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune and CARE Hospitals, Hyderabad in the next two months, said Dr N. Krishna Reddy, who coordinates the Stent Development at CARE.

A stent is a mesh-like device that is inserted into a blood vessel to provide support, keep the vessel open and unblocked and enhance blood flow.

Relisys Medical Devices is acquiring the coating infrastructure to not only develop the drug coating within India, but also to work with new drugs simultaneously to eliminate the chances of restenosis, which could occur in 5 per cent-10 per cent of the users of currently available drug-coated stents, he told newspersons.

Drug-coated stents are superior to most other available types such as tubular and coil type, but 2-3 times more expensive. India will be the fourth country after the US, Japan and Korea to indigenously develop these cardiac devices, said Dr Sunil Kapoor, Chief of Cardiology at CARE Nampally.

In India three companies — Vascular Concepts, Bangalore; Sahajanand Industries, Baroda and Relisys Medical have introduced indigenous versions of low cost stents. They have been able to capture nearly a third of the stents (about 25,000) used in the country. The increase in the availability of indigenous variants of these coronary stents are expected to drastically bring down the costs and save the country valuable foreign exchange, they said.

Coronary stents, first introduced by the US based Cook company have major global players such as Medtronics, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific, which have invested huge sums of money to develop newer technologies.

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