A preview of the emerging health care companies profiled in the current issue of Start-Up. This month's profile groups are "Treating Traumatic Brain Injury," with profiles of Banyan Biomarkers, NeuroPharma AB, and RemeGenix; and "Can Stents Pull Off a Disappearing Act?," with profiles of Amaranth Medical, Bioabsorbable Therapeutics, and TissueGen Plus these Start-Ups Across Health Care: Design Medical, Kythera Biopharmaceuticals and Plethora Solutions.

TissueGen, a start-up spun out of the University of Texas, is developing a bioabsorbable stent that permits the delivery of hydrophilic, or water soluable, therapeutics. If successful the sent would open up the door for a whole new family of drugs to be delivered via a stent.

Just three years ago bioabsorbable stents seemed to be more of a "nice to have" than a "need to have." After all,drug-eluting stents (DES) were seen as the answer to restenosis and showed very minimal risks to patient safety. But the recent concerns over DES have start-ups and corporations pushing harder for bioabsorbable stents.

The successful commercialization of drug-eluting stents (DES) has done much to pave the way for the biocoating industy. DES not only helped establish a new regulatory body to facilitate device-drug reviews, the FDA Office of Combination Products, they also proved that biocoated devices could take market share from uncoated products, command premium pricing and premium reimbursement.