Copenhagen students behind winning blood vessel device

Three students from the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) are on a team that have won the Danish entrepreneur contest Venture Cup Startup with a new device that could revolutionise medical surgery. And they are soon to take on other student start-up ventures from around the world in a global competition.

Every year, medical patients with damaged blood vessels suffer from traumas and complications. The current technique for re-attaching blood vessels has gone unchanged since its invention in the beginning of the 1900s. It is time-consuming, complex, and can only be performed by specially trained surgeons in the steady environment of a hospital.

The group which calls themselves ClickFlow Medtech plans to change all that: “We have come up with a medical device for use in the reconnection of blood vessels that greatly slashes the time of surgery, and reduces surgical complications,” Holti Kellezi, team member and UCPH student of molecular biomedicine says to the University Post.

Prototype design

The group’s device, which they call ClickFlow, will require less special training of surgeons and remove potential patient complications by reducing the risk of autoimmune immunogenic reactions.

ClickFlow Medtech consists of five people, three of who are University of Copenhagen students: Kristoffer Haurum Johansen and Holti Kellezi are both students of Molecular Biomedicine, Oskar Harmsen is a student of Economics, while Mads Schmidt Petersen is an entrepreneur from London and Ulrik Hjerpsted is a medical doctor from the University of Copenhagen finishing his specialty in cardiovascular surgery.

They have a prototype design and hope at the earliest to have ClickFlow ready for medical use in 2018.

In talks with venture capital

But for now, this September 2015, their team is to compete against the worlds most promising student start-up ventures in the University Startup World Cup in Copenhagen this September. Holti Kellezi, at UCPH student of molecular biomedicine says to the University Post that he is proud to have helped win the national Venture Cup and to have been invited.

“Winning the Venture Cup has been a fantastic opportunity and a great experience. I am happy to have worked together with such a group of dedicated, ambitious and talented individuals in ClickFlow MedTech,” he says.

“This competition opens up many doors. It also offers us a huge brand recognition. People have started taking us more seriously and we’ve already been contacted by venture capitalists and foundations for talks about the future of the company,” he says.

“The next step is the university start up competition, then we need finances and to finalise patenting, product optimisation, and testings in animal models, ultimately human models. But this will be years down the line”.

miy@adm.ku.dk

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