innovate arkansas

As a second-year surgery resident, Justin Regner, M.D., thought of a better way to temporarily close a patient's abdomen during ongoing treatment.

His design, called a Physiologic Abdominal Closure system, is now before the U.S. Patent Office. A business model for the design developed by a team of M.B.A. students recently won the $20,000 Arkansas Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup for Entrepreneurial Development.

"I just enjoy inventing," said Regner, beginning his fifth year of residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Ideally, he would like to form an enterprise that allows him to develop the ideas he gets through his surgical career.

The abdomen closure idea came about after he noticed that patients were experiencing high incision-related hernia rates after their abdomens were permanently closed following open abdominal treatment that lasted longer than 24 hours.

The hernia rate of 50 percent or higher is due to the abdominal muscles retracting because these muscles are not on traction during ongoing treatment of the bowel, Regner said.

Regner began thinking about a way to safely prevent these muscles covering the bowel from retracting. The PAC system also creates a temporary attachment that would allow the patient to move more freely while providing easy access to the bowel for treatment.

Its advantages include allowing for easier dressing changes, keeping the wound clean, preventing ongoing trauma to the muscles and other tissue, and providing a more efficient way to examine a patient's abdomen, Regner said.

"We can actually have a window into their abdominal cavity, so instead of taking the patient to the operating room and looking in, you can just pull their dressing down and see how it's progressing," he said.

He envisions the device becoming useful in critical care hospitals and in places like Iraq, where abdominal wounds from gunshots and bombs have been common.

Regner, who also has two other patents pending on medical devices, has enlisted the aid of UAMS BioVentures, which helps UAMS' faculty and residents take their discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace.

For his abdomen closure device, BioVentures partnered with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Sam M. Walton College of Business, which enlisted a team of its M.B.A. students to develop a business model.

The device closing the abdomen is the least complex and most simple to get into the market compared to his other surgical device ideas, Regner said. He has formed a company, Protrom Medical, under which to market it, but there are still a few years of work ahead before it's ready. In addition to needing patent approval, Regner will need federal Food & Drug Administration approval.

Regner is looking beyond his current pending patents to his future as a surgical inventor. He has discussed such a venture with Mike Douglas, Ph.D., director of BioVentures.

"Our goal is to develop a think tank company, and my focus, in addition to my clinical duties, would be on developing products and surgical innovation," Regner said.
The products created might spawn new companies or be sold to other companies, he said. The money from those sales could then be used to seed the development of more products.

"That's the dream," he said.

(This article was originally published in the June 24 issue of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences In the News newsletter.)