Duke spinout VQ Biomedical advancing its device for severe lung injury

By Kyle Marshall | This article originally appeared via NCBiotech's blog

Physicians treating patients suffering from severe, life-threatening lung damage don’t have many options.

When patients develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), putting them on a ventilator might not be sufficient. So doctors sometimes turn to a complicated and risky process called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) – but only if they happen to practice in one of the just 10% of U.S. hospitals with an ECMO machine.

A better option might be on the way, thanks to a Cary company that has secured more than $5 million in funding.

VQ Biomedical, spun out of Duke University, has developed a novel, minimally invasive catheter designed to deliver oxygen directly to the bloodstream. The catheter bypasses the lungs, giving ARDS patients a chance to recover without further lung injury.

If approved for commercial use, VQ’s device also would relieve acute-care hospitals of the significant cost and staffing burden of using ECMO as a last-resort treatment for ARDS.

“Hospitals spend a lot of money, both on ECMO and mechanical ventilation,” VQ CEO Galen Robertson said in an interview. “ECMO is expensive because it takes a lot of personnel, and there are a lot of complications as well. So if we can reduce the amount of personnel required and reduce the complications, that will save a lot of money for hospitals.”

Funding, contracts and grants

The promise of better care – and lower costs for hospitals – prompted a seed-round investment of $1.65 million in VQ from three Triangle funds. Cary-based Harbright Ventures, the Wolfpack Investor Network of early-stage investors who are alumni of N.C. State University and Duke Capital Partners led the round, announced in March.

VQ also has secured three additional sources of funding:

• A $2.4 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA funding is intended to help VQ develop a catheter prototype that can easily be deployed in military settings.
• A $750,000 contract from the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA). The agreement is part of BARDA’s Healing Lungs initiative, designed to improve care for ARDS patients.
• A $300,000 strategic growth loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

Greta Brunet, senior director of investments for emerging company development at NCBiotech, said VQ’s trajectory—from a clinician’s idea to an innovative solution—highlights the power of clinician-led innovation. The company has taken an ideal path from initial concept to starting and funding a company.

“VQ has demonstrated credibility at each step along the way to securing what they need to commercialize a great idea,” she said. “They’re showing what happens when universities, industry and government work together in North Carolina.”

Robertson said the total $5.1 million in funding will allow VQ to develop a commercial prototype of its catheter. Initial tests will be done on animals, which Robertson expects to occur this year, followed by human clinical trials targeted for 2027.

Going beyond ECMO

The catheter concept for treating ARDS got its start when Tobias Straube, M.D., a pediatric critical care physician at Duke University Hospital and assistant professor of medicine, began wondering why there wasn’t a better treatment for severe lung damage than ECMO.

ECMO involves removing the patient’s blood, sending it through an external artificial lung that adds oxygen, and pumping the blood back into the patient. The complex process is reserved for the most severe cases because of the risk of complications such as infection and bleeding. Using ECMO requires advanced, specialized training.

While Duke has one of the leading ECMO programs in the nation, Straube knew there was room for improving ARDS care. The condition, often caused by severe trauma or infection, results in fluid filling the lungs. Mortality rates are as high as 45%.

Straube collaborated with Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering to create and test a new way: Instead of removing blood to enrich it with oxygen, find a way to deliver the right amount of oxygen – safely, without oversaturating the blood – through a catheter.

He presented his idea at a 2022 conference at Duke. Robertson, who attended the event, struck up a conversation with Straube and his team of collaborators, and from there the group began talking about starting a company. VQ was born in 2023 and now has five employees. Straube serves as chief medical officer in addition to his role at Duke.

“As we talked through the project in more detail, it became more and more interesting,” Robertson said of his initial encounter with Straube’s team. “They were in a spot where they were saying, ‘Hey, we haven’t formed a company. We don’t know how to do that.’”

As a serial entrepreneur in the medical device industry who has steered 12 medical devices through the regulatory process, Robertson had the experience Straube needed.

“Our job is to take something that’s very complex and make it easy to use,” Robertson said. “If we can accomplish that, then it can be used everywhere, and it can save more lives than if we make something that works well but takes a high-acuity hospital to implement.”