The MedRes Nitinol Technology Center in Carlsbad, California [Photo courtesy of MedRes]
It’s the latest nitinol supply chain development as demand booms for the medtech material and the minimally invasive devices it makes possible, ranging from catheter-delivered implants to new therapies for leading killers such as heart disease, stroke and hypertension.
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Budapest-based MedRes opened the Carlsbad facility last summer. Its $1 million expansion includes expanded access to development and design services including prototyping, testing and materials science expertise, plus additional manufacturing capacity and a second line planned for mid-2025.
“At MedRes, we apply deep expertise to advance nitinol technology in support of our clients and their medical device innovation,” MedRes CEO Attila Meretei said in an email. “We strive to empower our customers to de-risk their development process with design insights and unmatched development and production capabilities and to bring their innovations to market in less time and at lower cost. If we do our job well, new health care solutions reach patients sooner and will be more broadly available.”
MedRes Chief Operating Officer Christine Trepanier [Photo courtesy of MedRes]
Trepanier and Bonsignore — whose careers overlapped in the 1990s and 2000s as engineers at Johnson & Johnson, where Meretei worked in marketing — are now joined by MedRes VP of Business Development Steve Parmelee, who was previously senior director of business development at Confluent.
“The three of us have been working with nitinol for decades,” Trepanier said in an interview. “We have decades of experience designing products, manufacturing products, developing processes for products and selling products. It’s our passion for nitinol that brought us together, and also our passion to partner with customers — partnering with them to really leverage our decades of experience to bring their products to market faster.”
They see a need in the nitinol market to better serve medical device startups and established OEMs on complex projects, especially where they can reduce expenses through their product design and development experience.
“We can design less costly products, use less nitinol, and improve processes to improve our yields and minimize waste,” Trepanier said. “There was a lot of discussion about supply chain last year and some of the challenges. We are in a unique position to work with multiple suppliers … so we can validate different sources to mitigate the risk of availability and rising costs of the material.”
MedRes Chief Technology Officer Craig Bonsignore [Photo courtesy of MedRes]
“We think there is a lot of opportunity in other systems,” Bonsignore said. “NOTES (natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery) is particularly interesting with devices where there’s a lot of nitinol and similar sorts of things being used off-label… by more pioneering interventionists and surgeons.”
The MedRes team plans to officially announce their expanded nitinol offerings next week and will be at MD&M West Booth No. 2422 to share more in February.
“We’ve had some very informative experiences in our careers, and we have a point of view for how to kind of tackle these sorts of projects,” Bonsignore said. “We think there should be more of what we do in the world, and we’re here to build it.”
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