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TWST: Would you start with a history and an overview of HemCon?
Mr. Morgan: Hemcon was founded in 2001 by two gentlemen, both
physicians. One was Dr. Kenton Gregory, who is an interventional
cardiologist here in Portland, Oregon, and the other was Dr. William
Wiesmann, who is a retired military medical officer and heads up a
development group in Washington, DC, by the name of Biostar. The two of
them really started the company in 2001 to develop a new life-saving
hemorrhage control technology. In 2002, with the support of the US
military through a grant, the initial HemCon bandage was developed in
about a four-month period between February and June 2002. It was
submitted to the Army for evaluation. They accepted the technology and
we moved very quickly to take it through the FDA. It was the second-
fastest FDA approval in history. That was cleared in 48 hours in the
fall of 2002. By March 2003, the first products were shipped to the
military in Afghanistan. TWST: Tell us about the product and what differentiates it from what was
on the market before.
Mr. Morgan: The basis of the technology is a material called chitosan.
We derive that material from shrimp shells. It's a natural material,
which for a number of years has been known to have certain
characteristics that would potentially have made it an excellent
hemostatic agent. Unfortunately, until the development of our product,
those characteristics had never been capitalized because it's a very,
very difficult material to work with and it's difficult to deliver these
qualities in a specific form. Our technology allowed us to take this
raw material and deliver it in such a way where basically three
attributes of the material are unique. First, when manufactured
appropriately, this material becomes a bio-adhesive material, meaning
that it will adhere aggressively to a bleeding wound without any other
type of adhesive agent. Second, the material carries a cationic charge,
which is a positive molecular charge that attracts the negatively
charged red blood cells, platelets and other things to the material so
when it's placed over a wound, those red blood cells and platelets will
be attracted to the bandage and begin the clotting process of the wound.
This process is independent of the body's own clotting pathways, which
means the product works on people with bleeding disorders and those on
anticoagulants. Third, the material carries an antibacterial barrier
property. Bacteria are attracted to the material, where it breaks down
the cell walls and destroys them. Those are three unique characteristics
and it's the first product to really address severe external hemorrhage
in the way I described.
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