SMT bags Italian government order for 40,000 drug eluting stents

India’s homegrown drug-eluting stent (DES) maker, Sahajanand Medical Technologies Pvt Ltd (SMT) on Monday informed that it has bagged the first-ever national tender from Italian government.

The company was a successful bidder in an open tender, which had stringent requirements of superior technology and clinical trials.

“SMT through its partner — Eukon has signed an agreement with the Italian government’s national purchase entity CONSIP — (Consip spa ) — a society of Economy & Finance Ministry, which manages purchase orders for public administrations in Italy. The agreement is to deliver up to 40,000 of bio degradable polymer coated Supraflex Cruz DES stents by 2022,” SMT informed in a statement.

Supraflex family, a cardiac drug-eluting stent indigenously designed and manufactured in India has been proved to be at par in safety as compared to Abbott’s Xience and also fared numerically better in efficacy in an investigator initiated multicenter European randomised controlled study with more than 1,400 patients, called ‘TALENT’.

Gaurav Goel, Head of Western Europe, SMT, said, “The tender win in Italy is the validation of our worldclass quality standards, best-in-class product performance and the clinical data of SMT DES. This achievement follows the previous tender wins in regions like Emilia Romagna and Sicily amongst others. SMT has been steadily gaining market share in Europe and is being recognised as a top tier player in the DES market.”

For the Italian tender, eight major medical device companies had qualified to participate. Based on the rating for advanced product features and clinical trial data, the committee selected SMT as the winner.

Supraflex stood top of the merit list in the tender because of its excellent clinical data and robust record of safety and efficacy, it added.

The stent market size in Italy is estimated to be approximately 250,000 DES, annually. It is one of the technologically advanced markets in the world and is an important territory to strengthen SMT’s presence in Europe.

Gennaro Broya de Lucia, General Manager of Eukon informed, “SMT has grown as a first-tier player in the Italian market in a very short time frame. Our combined efforts are giving good results. We have to consider this win as a shift in interventional cardiology paradigm. Our goal will be to keep investing and working to attract more and more professionals to join hands in SMT’s mission to ‘save millions’.”