Chinese Medical Device Debuted on The Lancet in Nearly 200 Years

  • 2018-09-06

On September 4, for the first time in its 200-year history, The Lancet (Authoritative academic Journal of Global Medicine) published a report on the clinical trials of a China-made device, the Firehawk stent, which was independently developed by the Shanghai-based MicroPort Scientific Corporation (hereinafter referred to as “MicroPort”). According to the research results of large-scale clinical trials in Europe, the study has resolved the major problems in the field of cardiovascular intervention which have plagued the world for more than 10 years.

The Lancet published the results of large-scale clinical trials on the Firehawk stent in Europe.


Hirehawk in the Lancet


It is proven that the implantation of Firehawk, as the third-generation targeted drug-eluting stent, helps the treated vascular area heal quickly at the early stage. Because of its innovative design of drugs contained in micro grooves, biodegradable polymer and lower drug loading (only one-third of that of the similar products can achieve the same effect), it greatly improves the safety, effectively reduces the occurrence of late thrombotic events. It stands at the top of the tech heap in the world.

After 15 years of repeated design and comparison, the Firehawk R&D team selected and reached the most technically difficult solution – drugs contained in micro-grooves, by laser grooving on the surface of the metal stent and then filling the grooves with drugs. Its differences from the conventional technology include: grooves can prevent the coating from falling off during delivery and drug loss; drugs can be accurately released from the corresponding grooves after reaching the vascular lesion area, thereby greatly improving effectiveness and avoiding waste.

Due to the extremely limited space, the difficulty in laser grooving on the surface of the metal stent is even greater than that of engraving on a human hair – making nearly 600 grooves on a piece of cobalt-chromium alloy thin as a human hair but extremely hard.

To accurately inject drugs into these micro grooves, MicroPort has independently developed more than 10 sets of unique equipment for applying the drug coating that can control the error to microns. Speaking of this technology, the technicians from the Firehawk R&D team jokingly said that this is the "spacecraft docking" in the medical device sector, because it adopts the most advanced scanning technology for space exploration combined with intelligent software algorithms.

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