NuVascular forms business advisory board

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NuVascular has partnered with experienced business leaders Paul Sandman, Albert Budney and Mark Radtke to form a new business advisory board. The group brings diverse leadership experience from companies such as Boston Scientific, Niagara Mohawk Holdings and Integrys Energy Group. The new board will work directly with the scientific advisory board and NuVascular founders Eugene Anton and Matthew Phaneuf to commercialise NuVascular’s haemodialysis access products.

“The team at NuVascular is a very talented and dynamic group,” said Sandman, former executive vice president and general counsel at medical device company Boston Scientific. “They are using ground-breaking technology that is very promising in terms of offering better patient outcomes and a better quality of life across a wide range of diseases.”

NuVascular’s platform technology was originally developed using more than US$6.6m in non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This patented electrospinning process mimics the natural biological scaffold in which native human tissue grows. Drugs can be incorporated into these fibres with a customised release rate and duration, which encourages healing and reduces complications. NuVascular’s focus is to apply this technology to haemodialysis access devices. However, the platform technology can be used for a variety of other applications ranging from biopacemakers and artificial blood vessels to anti-HIV blood filters and wound dressings. The company is currently in discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration.

“Before working with NuVascular, I had no idea how dismal the success rate is with artificial access grafts, haemodialysis catheters, sutures and many other medical devices,” said Budney, an energy industry veteran and member of natural gas and electricity supplier Integrys Energy Group’s board of directors. “Competitors have already acknowledged that NuVascular’s products are far superior, and with the first-class team NuVascular has assembled I have no doubt that this company will be a game-changer in the medical industry.”

Radtke rounds out the NuVascular board. As executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Integrys Energy Group, Radtke is responsible for leading strategic planning and corporate development.


I have spent my career building energy companies that were delivering not just an essential product to society, but also higher value, sustainable products such as renewable solar electricity,” said Radtke. “As rewarding as that is, it pales in comparison to the enormous contribution NuVascular can make by improving the shockingly low success rate of current arterial disease treatments. Anything we can do to improve those outcomes is not just an opportunity, but an obligation to society.”

“Matt and I feel privileged to have such an accomplished group join our business advisory board. We believe that their experience will assist us in bringing these life-changing products to market while building a substantial business,” said Anton, chief executive officer and co-founder of NuVascular.