VehiCLE

Spiral Endovascular Guide Wire

The Spiral Endovascular Guide Wire was brought to VehiCLE as an idea. Endovascular guide wires navigate blood vessels ahead of catheters.  This enables a smaller, flexible wire to navigate the intricate pathways and turns to ease the progression of the catheter behind it.  The idea of the spiral wire is that with the corkscrew pattern, complex turns and geomtries will be easier to navigate, and the tip of the wire will stay in the center of the blood vessel at all times as the spiral makes contact with the walls of the vessel.  The wiggle wire, which is a guide wire with several sinusoidal waveforms near the tip, is the closest product on the market to compare to.  This device works in a similar way to the spiral wire, but only in 2 dimensions instead of 3.

We began by designing several profiles of spiral shaped guide wires, with varying pitches and in both clockwise and counterclockwise orientations. We do not have heat treating capabilities, so we were not abe to set these shapes into nitinol or stainless steel, but we did bend copper wires into the designed shapes using custom forms that were created by vehiCLE. 

Once all designs were complete, vehiCLE contracted with an outside company that was able to produce forms and bend straight endovascular guide wires into our spiral geometries.  They delivered several samples, which were able to be tested in animal studies.  Going forward, more wires can be bent upon request.

Spiral Wire CAD Image                                  Spiral Wire Forms and Samples
    

Wiggle Wire vs Traditional Guide Wire 
  

Spiral Wire Drawing


Next Steps:
The Spiral Endovascular Guide Wire has been tested in animal studies and will continue to be tested by clinical experts. The next steps will be to market the wire to a potential licensee.

Provisional Patent Application: 63/274,701

Technology Transfer Specialist: Rebecca Holmes (Rebecca.Holmes@va.gov)

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