TriVascular growing

<p>In another sign that Sonoma County's fledgling medical device industry is growing, TriVascular Inc. has announced it will triple its plant size by moving into a vacant Agilent Technologies site near the airport before the end of the year.</p><p>The 7-year-old startup, which was acquired by medical giant Boston Scientific in April, has doubled its work force this year as it ramps up production of its first medical device.</p><p>"There's a trailer outside our building because we're so strapped for space," said President and co-founder Michael Chobotov.</p><p>TriVascular was founded in Santa Rosa in 1998 by Chobotov and four associates. Its first product, a stent-graft to treat cardiovascular disease, is in clinical trials in the United States and abroad. It is expected to be on the market in Europe next year and in the United States in 2008.</p><p>Chobotov said Tuesday the clinical trials are going well, and he expects the company will continue to expand in Santa Rosa. TriVascular currently has openings for a wide range of employees, from engineers to assemblers, he said.</p><p>TriVascular's move to larger quarters marks a further expansion of a cluster of competitive medical device makers near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.</p><p>Minneapolis-based Medtronic, which has headquartered its vascular division in Fountaingrove, expanded in March into a building adjacent to TriVascular's new home.</p><p>Medlogics Device Corp., founded in 2002, has been four blocks away on Westwind Boulevard since early last year.</p><p>TriVascular also has been nearby, in a much smaller facility on North Laughlin Road, since it moved there with about 15 employees six years ago.</p><p>All three companies make devices to repair damaged arteries.</p><p>TriVascular is developing a stent-graft to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. These aneurysms are a life-threatening condition created by a weakening and bulging of the aorta, which is the body's main blood-carrying vessel, carrying blood from the heart.</p><p>The TriVascular stent-graft is a tube made of plastic fabric with metal attachments at each end. It's about 1 inch in diameter and 5 inches to 9 inches long. The device, which is inserted in the aorta to provide a new conduit for blood, protects the aorta from rupture by relieving the pressure from the blood flow.</p><p>Other companies make stent-grafts, but Chobotov believes the TriVascular product has unique characteristics.</p><p>"We hope to demonstrate it's extremely durable and stable yet delivered through a very small-diameter catheter. It can treat a wide variety of aneurysms," Chobotov said.</p><p>Medlogics is developing a drug-releasing stent, which is a different device from a stent-graft. Stents are small tubes of metal scaffolding that hold open arteries to permit adequate blood flow. Stents are now being improved by the addition of drugs that reduce complications after surgery.</p><p>Medlogics believes its stent, which will take a different drug approach and method of delivery from current stents', will be better for patients, said co-founder and President Richard Klein. The product is still in the research and development phase.</p><p>Medtronic makes both stent-grafts and stents, including a drug-coated stent made in Santa Rosa and Ireland that it is releasing in Europe this week and plans to bring to the U.S. market in 2007.</p><p>The growth of stent and stent-graft development in Santa Rosa is seen by some business leaders as a promising sign for the county's small medical device industry, which includes at least seven companies employing about 1,700 people.</p><p>"What's important is that two major medical device companies have decided to locate significant operating divisions here in the North Bay," said Steve Weiss, who was chairman of TriVascular until it was acquired by Boston Scientific.</p><p>Medical device companies and related pharmaceutical and biotech companies are seen as promising replacements for part of the telecommunications industry, which sprang up in Sonoma County in the 1990s but dropped off since the tech collapse in 2000 and 2001.</p><p>For example, the facilities now leased to TriVascular and Medtronic are part of a cluster of four large buildings built for Agilent Technologies by Panattoni Development Co. in Sacramento during the high-tech boom.</p><p>Agilent, then a division of Hewlett-Packard Co., moved into the buildings in 2000 but left in 2003 as a result of the telecom recession. The other two buildings are still vacant.</p><p>TriVascular will start with about 300 people working in the 110,000-square-foot building it has just leased at 3910 Brickway Blvd. in the Airport Business Center. About half the jobs are in production and the rest include a broad range of jobs from human resources to research and development.</p><p>Today the two-story building is a cavernous shell as general contractor Rudolph & Stetten Inc. converts it to an environmentally controlled manufacturing facility with a clean room, laboratories, offices and production space.</p><p>Next door, the 62,000-square-foot Medtronic facility at 3850 Brickway Blvd. is mostly general office and meeting room space. Medtronic employs about 220 people there, mainly marketing and regulatory workers, said spokesman Scott Papillon. It employs another 1,000 people at three other Sonoma County locations.</p><p>Medlogics has 15 people in an 8,900-square-foot building at 3589 Westwind Blvd. in the Westwind Business Park. These employees, mostly engineers, scientists and chemists, are doing research and development, Klein said.</p>