Sahajanand Medical Technologies (SMT), an India-based manufacturer of Coronary stent systems, has received CE mark for Supraflex Cruz, its next-generation Supraflex stent system.
Supraflex Cruz is a Sirolimus-eluting stent built on a cobalt-chromium platform having implanted in more than 2,50,000 patients in India and selected international markets over last three years.
The stent retains all the benefits of the Supraflex stent, viz, ultra-thin strut thickness (60 microns for all diameters and lengths), blend of proprietary biodegradable polymers to release the drug, thin layer of polymers, high radial strength, and low crossing profile.
New manufacturing plant
The milestone approval arrives ahead of SMT's new stent manufacturing facility goes online next year.
"Our Hyderabad plant will be Asia's largest stent manufacturing facility," said Ganesh Sabat, the CEO of SMT, to local newspaper Telangana Today.
The proposed plant will be up and running by 2020 with an investment of Rs 250 crores (some US$35 million). The plant will also have a research and development (R&D) centre. "The unit will be manufacturing one million stents and two million balloon catheters per annum," Sabat pointed out.
Once ready for operation, the plant could employ 1,200 to 2,000 people. The stents manufactured in Hyderabad plant will be for both India and international markets such as the US, Europe and Japan.
Sabat told the paper that SMT invests heavily in research and development. "As a policy, we earmark 10% of our revenue to be spent on R&D every year. Recently we opened an R&D centre in Ireland. We have heavily invested in a randomised trial in Europe to prove the quality of our product on a global scale."
In the last five years, SMT has introduced several new technologies into drug-eluting stents (DES).
SMT's ultra-thin platform with biodegradable polymer is deemed one of the most advanced technologies in the world.