July 16, 2012 — Mercator MedSystems, a medical technology company whose platform Micro-Infusion Catheter technology announced preliminary results of its DANCE clinical trial that continues to follow patients at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and San Francisco VA Medical Center. The technology offers catheter-guided, microfluid injection systems for site-specific, nonsystemic delivery of therapeutic agents directly across any peripheral or coronary blood vessel to treat peripheral vascular diseases, cancer, heart attacks, and other life-threatening diseases and disorders.
The sponsor and principal investigator of the DANCE clinical trial is Christopher D. Owens, M.D., an associate professor and vascular surgeon at the Center for Limb Preservation, part of the UCSF Heart and Vascular Center. Results on 10 patients to date, at nine-month follow-up after an angioplasty or atherectomy, showed that those patients who also were infused with dexamethasone to the adventitia of the targeted blood vessel made possible by Mercator MedSystems’ patented and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared Bullfrog Micro-Infusion Catheter have now passed nine months without restenosis of the index lesion. The Mercator platform is the first and only vascular-access system designed to inject drugs, genes and cells safely through vessel walls into deep tissues without major surgery.
Delivering drugs through the blood vessel wall into the perivascular space and adventitia allows for direct, highly controllable and concentrated treatment, not only minimizing the toxicity of systemic administration but also avoiding the “washing away” of drug into the bloodstream. This can reduce drug side effects, increase therapeutic effectiveness, decrease the cost of medical treatment and improve patient quality of life.
Mercator MedSystems Inc., based in San Leandro, Calif., is a privately held medical technology company focused on commercializing catheter-guided, microfluid infusion systems for site-specific delivery of therapeutic agents for applications in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary, oncology and regenerative medicine.
For more information: www.mercatormed.com
April 03, 2024 
