Accentus Medical, a leading developer of advanced surface modifications and coating technologies, is pleased to announce a funding award of £70,736 from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, towards a project targeted at demonstrating production line readiness of its innovative Acusure Ag® silver ion based antimicrobial hydroxyapatite coating for orthopaedic implants. This award has been received from Innovate UK’s Collaborative R&D competition for funding: Production line readiness for high-value manufacturing.
Acusure Ag® combines silver ions, a well-known antimicrobial agent, with the company’s clinically established Acusure® plasma spray hydroxyapatite coating technology. The technology involves silver ion dosing of the hydroxyapatite coated implant surface, utilising Accentus Medical’s proprietary process control technology.
The project will transition the Acusure Ag® production process from a laboratory setting, to demonstration of a scaled-up manufacturing process enabling cost-effective commercial supply to Accentus Medical’s growing customer base of global orthopaedic device manufacturers. The key project innovation will be to develop control methodology delivering capability for silver dosing of the implant surface in a batch processing environment, consistent with the stringent process validation requirements of global medical device regulators.
The Acusure Ag® technology is already in the early stages of commercialisation. In fact the first clinical implantation of a custom orthopaedic device coated with Acusure Ag® took place in Adelaide, Australia on 10 July 2015. This device was distributed by Signature Orthopaedics, a pioneering commercial partner of Accentus Medical in the global orthopaedic device market.
Dr Philip Agg, CEO, said: “The launch of this exciting project supported by Innovate UK represents a further landmark in the development of Accentus Medical as a high growth UK manufacturing company supplying innovative, world leading technologies to an increasing portfolio of customers within the global medical device market. The project will develop our capability in a production relevant environment, providing the essential foundation for Accentus Medical to exploit the Acusure Ag® technology, from its UK manufacturing base, to an orthopaedic export market that is forecast to maintain sustained growth driven by global population ageing.”
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For further information, please contact:
Philip Agg, CEO
T: +44 (0)1235 434328
Email: enquiries@accentus-medical.com