Myka Labs CEO Dan Laser, Ph.D. will join executives from other leading life sciences companies in presenting at the LSI Europe investor conference, taking place in Sintra, Portugal from September 16-19, 2024.
During the annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Surgery (APSA) held this week in Phoenix, Arizona, the organization bestowed its highest honor, the APSA Distinguished Service Award, on pioneering UCSF pediatric and fetal surgeon–and Myka Labs founder–Dr. Michael Harrison. The Distinguished Service Award has only been awarded a few times in APSA’s history. Dr. Harrison received this tremendous honor in recognition of his wide-ranging contributions in the fields of pediatric surgery, including his pioneering research on healing and necrosis in neonatal gastrointestinal tract tissue that were a critical foundational element for the development of Connect, an innovative system for use in repairing congenital malformations involving the esophagus and windpipe now being brought to market by Myka Labs. Dr. Harrison’s contributions over his lengthy career also include having pioneered fetal surgery to repair malformations involving the diaphragm that were, until the introduction of the technique developed by Dr. Harrison’s team, almost always fatal.
While Connect is an incredible advance in the field of pediatric surgery, Myka’s pipeline of products based on its proprietary advanced sensor system architectures and artificial intelligence-based anatomy modeling algorithms includes many new solutions for conditions that predominantly affect adults: pancreatic cancer and liver cancer, as well as wide-ranging other conditions involving the gastrointestinal tract, heart and lungs. At the annual meeting of the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Gastroenterologists and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) which took place last month, a report on groundbreaking research conducted by a joint UCSF-Myka Labs team was among the highest profile events of the meeting, having been selected for a prestigious long-form podium presentation.
The study presented at SAGES by research team member and UCSF surgery fellow Dr. Tejas Sathe sought to elucidate the relationship between endogenous production of gut hormones and the relative composition of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, lipid) in food taken into the body. The existence of a triggering effect on the production of hormones like GLP-1 and peptide YY by the arrival of food in the distal portion of the small bowel–where the largest number of hormone-producing L cells are found–is widely believed to play a role in the favorable health benefits seen with procedures like sleeve gastrectomy. An improved understanding of how different macronutrients affect gut peptide hormones holds great promise for the development of new therapeutic approaches for type 2 diabetes and obesity–including approaches that can potentially spare patients from the need for lifetime drug regimens, as currently required with GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic (semaglutide).
The research team included both Myka Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Michael Harrison as well as renowned endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, a member of the Myka Labs advisory board.
Paper appears in the March 2024 issue of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.
A new publication appearing in a leading pediatric surgery journal concludes that Connect-EA, a recently developed system for use in treating newborns born with a rare esophageal condition, is a safe for use in high-risk patients.
For the 25,000 babies born every year with esophageal atresia, taking in nutrition by mouth–whether nursing or bottle-feeding–is impossible. The esophagus has formed in two pieces instead of as a single long, continuous tubular organ. Most babies born with esophageal atresia also have a related condition known as tracheoesophageal fistula, where one or both of the esophageal pouches is fused to the windpipe (trachea).
Thanks to advances in surgical techniques and intraoperative imaging dating back to the 1940s, for most babies born with esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula, surgical “repair” is now widely performed. While the development of early techniques for surgical repair of esophageal atresia was a major achievement in the practice of medicine, pediatric surgeons are continuously seeking to improve how they care for babies born with esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula. Two top priorities: repairing the condition with fewer or smaller incisions, wtih the goal of sparing the patient from potential long-term musculoskeletal injuries; and minimizing the likelihood that scarring around the former site of the malformation will result in a baby born with EA/TEF experiencing problems in the weeks, months and years after a repair.
Devised on the basis of years of research into the physiology of the neonatal esophagus and designed to take advantage of advanced technologies for navigating slender tubular instruments within a baby’s body, Connect-EA is the first major advance in esophageal atresia patient care in decades.
Connect-EA uses an innovative clip design with the potential to minimize formation of scar tissue in the esophagus. In another important advance, for many babies, the Connect-EA clip components can be put in place without the need for any new incisions. Tiny sensors designed to be used with the Connect-EA clips make it possible for the care team to carefully maneuver the clip components into position while minimizing the need for x-ray.
The new paper summarizes the results of the first group of babies treated with Connect-EA. This babies treated included several with multiple major comorbidities, like problems with their hearts and lungs.
The paper reaches a conclusion that is an exciting step for pediatric surgeons around the world, as well as for the families of babies born with esophageal atresia: Connect-EA can be used safely for repairing esophageal atresia in high-risk babies. Of particular note is that, by 3 months after repair, every single one of the patients treated had no need for dilations. Long-term reliance on dilation is common in babies who have undergone esophageal atresia repair where narrowing of the esophagus occurs due to scarring.
Myka Labs is working closely with pediatric surgeons around the world as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, other regulatory bodies, and other key stakeholders to broaden the group of esophageal atresia patients who have the opportunity to be treated using Connect-EA and to eventually make Connect-EA available around the world.
Patients were treated at three leading institutions in the U.S. and Europe: Stanford Children’s, Vanderbilt Children’s, and Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospital at LMU Klinikum in Munich, Germany.
In a major presentation at a leading pediatric surgery meeting, Myka Labs revealed key details of the design and functionality of a family of innovative surgical team awareness solutions it is working to bring to the field of pediatric surgery.
The Myka Labs awareness solutions are designed with a particular focus on rendezvous procedures, where multiple endoscopes and catheters are introduced into the patient’s body from different locations and, in order to achieve a therapeutic objective, must be steered toward a single point.
To facilitate safe, streamlined completion of rendezvous procedures in pediatric surgery, Myka Labs has developed a suite of tools leveraging ultraminiature sensor technology and high-performance computer vision algorithms. When using the system, care teams can view augmented reality and virtual reality depictions of the instruments to be rendezvoused.
The talk at the International Pediatric Endosurgery Group meeting (IPEG) focused on surgical team awareness in repair of birth defects involving the windpipe and esophagus. Around 25,000 newborns each year around the world are born with one of these birth defects.
Myka Labs is a venture-backed, clinical-stage company based in San Francisco, California.
Daniel Laser, Myka Labs CEO, will join a panel including other thought leaders in artificial intelligence speaking at a major conference to be held in San Francisco on June 16, 2023, the company announced today.
The meeting brings together leaders in the fields of medtech and digital health and takes place annually. It is sponsored by Wilson Sonsini.
Groundbreaking research on new ways of treating complications of Crohn’s disease, being jointly conducted by researchers from Myka Labs, ISCARE and the University of California at San Francisco, was presented at the 2023 Crohn’s and Colitis Congress, held in Denver, Colorado.
The significant contribution of fibrosis in many Crohn’s strictures is a barrier to durable stricture resolution. While less-invasive interventions like balloon dilation and enteral stent placement can offer transient relief of stricture symptoms, many Crohn’s patients with strictures currently progress to requiring major surgery.
The research reported at the Crohn’s and Colitis Congress focuses on durably resolving strictures without surgery. A key element is endoscopically placing specialized dual-flange semi-collapsible device systems within and around strictured segments. The research team reported promising results that this approach appears to simultaneously excises core fibrotic tissue while promoting peripheral healing.
Arrays of ultraminiature sensors incorporated into the device components used in the study allowed the research team to precisely characterize the stricture response to therapy. The study is the first long-term follow-up of the new approach to Crohn’s stricture treatment in a validated animal model.
Presenting for the Myka Labs team at the Congress will be co-author and Myka Labs Scientific Advisory Board Member Dr. Barry Salky, a longtime leader in the field of Crohn’s patient care. The lead authors on the paper are Dr. Caressa Chen from UCSF Surgical Innovations and Dr. Juan Verde from the Institute for Image Guided Surgery in Strasbourg, France. Dr. Chen and Dr. Verde contributed equally on the work.