Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at BusinessMakers.com. Now it's time for the Aflac BusinessMakers flashback, brought to you by Aflac, ask about it at work. And this morning we're gonna roll back to early October of this year, when I was invited to attend the Houston Technology Center, Technology Showcase. Where I had the opportunity to visit with Dr Yasmin Wadia, the Founder and C.E.O of Laser Tissue Welding. The Company that enables hemo-staces and suture less surgery. We enter the discussion with Dr. Wadia telling us about laser tissue welding.

Yasmin: Laser Tissue welding is a surgical technology that gets us to the next level. It's as easy as point and shoot with a laser and you fuse tissues together to get a weld which can stop bleeding instantly. At present we do not have a technology that can stop bleeding in tissues without using coagulation factors or bar-b-queuing the tissue.

Russ: Wow. Sounds cool. So what is the status of the company? Is this being used today?

Yasmin: No. Laser Tissue Welding is not being used today. We are going thru an F.D.A approval process at the moment, which we should have within the next three to six months. At that time we can sell this technology to surgeons and operating rooms all across the country.

Russ: Have you yourself seen it work an…

Yasmin: Yes, I invented the technology

Russ: Ok.

Yasmin: at Oregon Medical Laser Tissue Center in Portland, Oregon, under an Army grant and we have done extensive animal studies and we finished our proto-type manufacturing and characterization of the material.

Russ: Would it only be used during surgical procedures or is it possibly that it even has an emergency application?

Yasmin: Oh yes. The first application would be trauma, because trauma injuries are horrendous and you can not quantify how much trauma internal damage there is and liver, spleen and kidney are the first organs to fracture and break and accentually a lot of mortality is due to liver injuries.

Russ: So, from your perspective you see a point in time where somebody's had a massive traumatic injury and it's obvious that most likely their liver was damaged, meaning it was cut and that through quick access to the liver your laser device could actually weld close the problem?

Yasmin: that's right.

Russ: Wow!

Yasmin: This is the next level in technology. We don't have a modality today that can do that and it's very important that it gets into the hands of surgeons as soon as possible.

Russ: Ok. Tell us a little about your company. I mean how have you funded it and I would imagine with all the tests and processes that it requires quite a bit of capital.

Yasmin: Yes, that's right. This company was funded first by a SBIR phase one NIH grant for $160,000.00 dollars by the NIH. And by the Texas Emerging Technology Fund for another $160,000.00 dollars. And we have funded it ourselves this far.

Russ: Ok. And I would expect to get to the point where it's actually being used is going to acquire quite a bit more funding.

Yasmin: That's right. To get to the next level we need to do a clinical trial which will cost around $2.5 Million dollars and a scaled up manufacturing facility will cost around $8 million dollars.

Russ: So I would assume then that you actually end up spending quite a bit of your time on fund raising?

Yasmin: Yes, I do.

Russ: Ok. Dr. Wadia I really appreciate you sharing this with us and we encourage you to keep pushing for it cause that just sounds like a real cool innovation.

Yasmin: Thank you so much Russ.

Russ: You bet. We've been talking with Dr. Yasmin Wadia Founder and C.E.O of Laser Tissue Welding.