IST Finds a New Model and Some Investors

01 Sep 2005

The Texas Back Institute's incubator, Innovative Spinal Technologies Inc. (IST), has scrapped its first technology transfer model. Last year it , began working with large VCs to re-draw its model and recapitalize the company.

For the past 20 years, few institutions have had as significant an impact on medical device development in a specific clinical space as the Texas Back Institute (TBI) has had in spine. From its early work in pedicle screws to spinal cages to its central role in spine's most dynamic new technology, artificial discs, most major technology advances have gone through TBI at one point in their march toward commercialization.

But for years, TBI had basically been giving away its ideas for new spine devices to companies, with little or...