CIMIT Launching Technology Platform for Inhalation Therapy with $1.5M in Seed Funds from Air Liquide

CIMIT has announced it is establishing a technology platform for the development of innovative approaches to inhalation therapy, an ambitious initiative made possible through $1.5 million in seed funding from Air Liquide.

Air Liquide, an industry leader based in France, serves more than 5,000 hospitals and 300,000 homecare patients around the world. The group supplies gases, hygiene products and equipment to hospitals, and inhalation therapy and homecare services to respiratory patients.

The CIMIT technology project, called the Inhalation Technology Program, will be developed over three years. Its aim is to facilitate the development of innovative inhalation therapy technologies. Such technologies will help reduce both human suffering and health-care costs for those with chronic and acute respiratory conditions.

This partnership reflects CIMIT’s stature as a trusted force in the development of innovative technology in medicine. CIMIT has numerous institutional friends but this seed grant to launch the new program is unique.

“This funding will enable CIMIT to develop a new program directed at respiratory medical conditions which have a high cost to patients and society,” said CIMIT Executive Director John Parrish, MD. “We look forward to building a network of innovative leaders in this domain, and to the technologies that will emerge from it. Ultimately, patients will benefit from better medical care.”

CIMIT will manage the initiative, and will recruit a team headed by a program leaders and a high-level Scientific Advisory Council. Expert consultants will help identify the highest potential collaborations and will reach out to other sources for additional financial support. CIMIT will convene key researchers and scientists to generate the greatest innovation possible.

Martha Heitzmann, PhD, vice president, Research and Development for Air Liquide, stated, “Air Liquide is pleased to provide the seed money for this CIMIT program. We look forward to working with other industrial and academic partners to advance inhalation technologies.”

The CIMIT Inhalation Program will stimulate the development of technologies and techniques that will allow using the pulmonary passages as a “highway” to deliver therapeutic molecules directly to diseases or irritated tissue. CIMIT will establish an Inhalation Technology Consortium – including pharmaceutical and medical devices companies and non-profit organizations – to fund subsequent phases of research and development.  CIMIT will also establish a plan for disseminating research, and finding and training inhalation technology researchers and practitioners, and it will develop education services to highlight the clinical challenges and technological approaches to inhalation therapies and techniques.

“This funding from Air Liquide, a leading and respected international corporation, reflects the fact that CIMIT is a world-class leader in medical innovation,” said Beverly Brown, PhD, chief development officer at CIMIT. “Our organization looks forward to developing a program that will benefit patients in all communities.”

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CIMIT is the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. A non-profit consortium of Boston-area teaching hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT provides innovators with resources to explore, develop and implement novel technological solutions for today’s most urgent healthcare problems.

Members of the consortium are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Partners HealthCare and VA Boston Healthcare System.

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With more than 40,000 employees in 75 countries, Air Liquide is a world leader in industrial and medical gases and related services. The group offers innovative solutions based on constantly enhanced technologies and produces air gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, rare gases) and many other gases including hydrogen.

The group contributed to the manufacturing of many everyday products: bubbles in sparkling beverages, protective atmosphere for packed foods, oxygen for hospitals and homecare patients, ultra-pure gases for the semiconductor industry, hydrogen to desulfurize fuels and other goods.

Founded in 1902, Air Liquide had sales in 2007 of about $16 billion, with commerce outside France accounting for almost 80 percent.