 |
OYSTER POINTER is a monthly publication about business in the Oyster Pointer area of Newport News, VA. More About the Oyster Pointer Publication Submit Your Ideas and Thoughts “Oyster Pointer Salutes:” Archives Request
a copy of the Oyster Pointer Publication |
Soluble Systems, LLC: Newport News company set to become a national player in the wound care industry Ten years ago, Dr. Guy Levy, a Newport News dentist, had an uncomfortable late-night experience that led him to begin researching how to treat xerostomia (dry mouth). “I got up at three in the morning [and] my mouth was like the Sahara desert,” Levy says. He was sick with an infection at the time—the incident got him thinking about some of his patients who suffered from dry mouth every night, having their sleep constantly disrupted. Working with Polymer Solutions Incorporated, based in Blacksburg, VA, Levy says he “developed a polymer that achieved everything I wanted to achieve.” He called his friend, Allan Staley, a lawyer he had met through the Jaycees, and told him of his discovery. In 1999, Staley and Levy co-founded Soluble Systems and in 2003, they patented the polymer technology. They initially planned to market a product to treat dry mouth, but the major companies they talked with universally agreed that there wasn’t enough of a market for that at the time; since Levy had found that the same polymer technology that eased xerostomia symptoms (by providing moisture to dry mouths) could treat wounds, the pair decided to come out with a bandage product. Last September, Soluble Systems launched its flagship product, TheraGauze™ on a mass scale, manufacturing it at the company’s plant in Hampton. Soluble System’s corporate headquarters has been in the Jefferson Labs complex, on the edge of Oyster Point, since the end of last summer. Staley is now president of Soluble Systems and Levy is chief technology officer. Staley left his law practice to focus full-time on Soluble Systems; Levy continues to practice dentistry, but still spends plenty of time working to develop new products based on the original technology. TheraGauze™, according to the product brochure, is a wound dressing that “adapts to a wound’s underlying conditions to provide optimal moisture content for enhanced healing—without maceration.” Maceration occurs when the skin absorbs too much moisture, turning soft, white and wrinkly—if you’ve ever spent too much time lying in the tub or lounging in the sauna, you’ve experienced maceration. TheraGauze™ is extremely safe. “You could swallow this, eat it, sew it up in your body,” without incurring any problems, Levy says. Another benefit is that you’re “not disturbing the wound bed constantly,” says T. Kerry McCarter, chief executive officer for Soluble Systems, as some traditional bandages have to be changed several times a day. “With us, you leave it on two or three days,” McCarter says. Fewer changes mean more uninterrupted time for the wound to heal. McCarter joined Soluble Systems in 2005, bringing along his years of experience in restructuring businesses and introducing marketing programs for Johnson & Johnson. Soluble Systems went from “zero to 10 [employees] in 2007,” Staley says, and the company plans to add “five or six in 2008.” Soluble Systems is also “associated with another 20 sales reps nationally,” he says, and employs 30 to 40 mentally handicapped patients at its manufacturing plant, through its partnership with Arc of the Virginia Peninsula. Now that TheraGauze™ has been launched, Staley and McCarter spend much of their time marketing it by going to regional and national medical care conferences and targeting wound care centers, podiatry offices, hospitals and home health care providers. They hope to bring TheraGauze™ into the direct retail market within two or three years, but right now they’re focused on getting themselves firmly established within the medical community. “Once we get [medical professionals] used to using it, they become converts very fast,” Levy says. Adam Landsman, DPM, PhD, an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard University School of Medicine and a medical advisor for Soluble Systems, wrote a white paper in April 2007 in which he concluded, “TheraGauze™ represents the first of what will probably be a new wave of ‘Smart Dressings,’ which are capable of being tuned to either dispense or extract moisture from a wound, and which can act simultaneously to control moisture to a different extent in adjacent sites, even within the same wound bed. We believe that we have a breakthrough technology for the treatment of complicated wounds.” Locally, both the Wound Care Center at Mary Immaculate Hospital and Peninsula Foot and Ankle Specialists in Oyster Point use TheraGauze™ for their patients. McCarter himself used it on his daughter to reduce scarring from a surgery she had recently. He says some patients who suffer from diabetic foot ulcers have to be given morphine before getting their dressings changed because the pain from removing the dressings is so severe—many traditional dressings stick to the wound, causing pain and reversing days of healing. After using TheraGauze™, some patients find they have no need for the morphine. “[Our] objective here is to improve the quality of life” for chronic wound-care patients, says McCarter. Staley adds, “[We’re] a company built on a premise of helping people.” |
Soluble Systems, LLC, is a Newport News start-up which recently launched what it believes is a revolutionary product enabling it to compete nationally in the $20 billion annual wound-care market against the likes of Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gamble.