Vascular electroporation for deep tumor ablation and organ
This technology uses a patient's own blood vessels as wires to deliver precisely targeted electrical pulses deep into organs to destroy tumors or to clean out cellular material from donor tissue. Instead of inserting electrodes directly into tissue—which limits reach and precision—the system connects electrodes to an artery and a vein, using the conducting fluid in the bloodstream to carry the ablation energy throughout the vascular network of an organ. In tumor treatment, this allows physicians to kill cancer cells in hard-to-reach locations without heat damage to surrounding tissue. In a second application, the same electrical approach can strip cells from donor organs outside the body, leaving behind a clean biological scaffold with intact blood vessel architecture that can then be repopulated with a patient's own cells for transplantation.
What you could build
A catheter-based ablation system for interventional oncologists treating inoperable solid tumors in vascular organs such as the liver, kidney, or pancreas; a second commercial path exists as a bioprocessing device sold to organ engineering and transplant research labs for producing decellularized scaffolds.
Who in Virginia should care
Inova Health System, VCU Health, and UVA Health all operate active oncology and transplant surgery programs that would be natural early clinical partners; Virginia's medtech corridor around Northern Virginia and Richmond could host device commercialization.
Readiness: Prototype likely
Concept — described but not yet demonstrated. Lab validated — supported by experimental results in the patent. Prototype likely — the text describes a built, working embodiment.
Readiness is inferred from the patent text, not from a lab visit.
The record
- Inventors
- Michael B. Sano, Rafael V. Davalos, John L. Robertson, Paulo A. Garcia, Robert E. Neal
- Granted
- January 21, 2020
- Status
- Granted patent
- Patent number
- 10537379
Ready to talk?
Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties handles licensing for this technology.
Prosim summaries are generated from public patent text and are not legal advice.