Alumni

Patrick Cottler
PhD Biomedical Engineering 2000

Improving on Nature

If you think the medical community abandoned leeches in the eighteenth century, think again. Hirudo medicinalis, or the medicinal leech, is still widely used by plastic surgeons and other physicians to help promote healing in skin flaps after surgery. Essentially, leeches create the low pressure needed to draw blood to the affected area, effectively restoring blood flow and promoting healing.

Not surprisingly, leeches make some patients squirm. That's why Patrick Cottler, a BME alumnus and now visiting scientist, invented Aspiraide, or the mechanical leech. Patrick's goal was to create a device that supplies the same low pressure suction otherwise supplied by Hirudo medicinalis.

At first Patrick adapted a NASA polymer capable of extremely large voltage-activated displacements. But the latest version of Aspiraide generates negative pressure by regulating the vacuum source in the patient's hospital room, communicating it to a series of hypodermic needles contained in a two-inch-square plastic box. Once it is attached to the patient, it draws small amounts of blood into a reservoir. At a further stage of product development, microsystems technology will replace the needle assembly.

Not only does Patrick's invention eliminate, as he puts it, the "fear and disgust factor," but it also decreases the risk for infection resulting from bacteria in the leech's gut. Plus, there's little chance that Aspiraide will wander off its target in search of a warmer resting place, as Hirudo medicinalis is known to do.

Patrick believes that his award-winning device now offers sufficient advantage to patients and hospitals that he is building a company around his technology as he refines it. Charlottesville-based Cottler Technologies, LLC got a boost from an NIH Phase I SBIR grant and received $750,000 in Phase II funding this summer.

The NIH aren't the only ones taking notice of the mechanical leech. Patrick was a finalist in the Darden School's Business Plan Competition, earning him financial and infrastructure support from the Batten Institute's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. National recognition came his way through a recent Worth Magazine article highlighting Aspiraide as a cutting-edge technology to watch. Wound care companies and venture capital groups have also expressed interest in the mechanical leech, and discussions about future clinical trials have already begun.