( RALEIGH N.C. April 18 2007 /PRNewsw...)Micell Technologies Presents Data on Novel Drug-Eluting Stents,Health

RALEIGH, N.C., April 18, 2007 /PRNewswire/ -- Micell Technologies announced today that the Company will be presenting data on use of its supercritical fluid (SCF) surface modification technology for drug-eluting stents at the upcoming Society for Biomaterials 2007 Annual Meeting, April 19-21 2007 in Chicago, Illinois.

The abstracts describe use of Micell and PNNL's, 2006 R&D 100 Award winning e-RESS technology to create drug-eluting stents containing crystalline drugs, such as sirolimus, and multiple drug combinations such as paclitaxel and heparin.

e-RESS (e for electrostatic, RESS for Rapid Expansion from Supercritical Solution) is a new technology for creating novel drug-eluting materials for cardiovascular stents and other medical devices. The technology was jointly developed by Micell and scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and has been licensed exclusively to Micell.

This unique technology has the potential to provide improvements to conventional solvent based systems by maintaining control of drug morphology, targeting drug placement within the coating and customizing elution rates of single or multiple drugs. In addition, the SCF method avoids solvents and high temperatures so it can be used with new therapeutic classes, such as proteins or genes, in addition to existing therapeutic agents.

Link to abstract 1: (http://www.micell.com/development1.pdf)

Link to abstract 2: (http://www.micell.com/development2.pdf)

While drug-eluting stents have demonstrated dramatic improvements in early restenosis rates compared to bare metal stents, concerns over late stent thrombosis have been the subject of much recent discussion in the medical community and the media. These concerns have been driven largely by a
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