In 2002, the Flinn Foundation commissioned the creation of Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap, the long-term strategic plan to advance Arizona’s bioscience sector. One of the four main strategies of the original Roadmap was to create a critical mass of bioscience firms in Arizona. In 2014, the Roadmap was updated, with the first of five new goals being to “Form a hub of bioscience entrepreneurs and new enterprises across Arizona.”
To address this goal, the Flinn Foundation Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program was established in 2013 to foster entrepreneurship and help early-stage bioscience firms develop into successful and sustainable businesses.
POBA Medical is an Arizona based development and contract manufacturing startup focused on the emerging need for thermoplastic balloon development for numerous novel applications that are vascular and non-vascular based. Due to recent M&A activities within the OEM Contract Manufacturing world, the current medical device startup's and mid-sized companies are searching for rapid turn, high quality development partners willing to support prototype through pilot manufacturing. POBA Medical brings medical device expertise across a full range of balloon design, balloon catheter design, and manufacturing within it's dedicated engineering team.
The 2017 Bioscience Entrepreneurship Award to POBA Medical is Daniel J. Kasprzyk's second straight Entrepreneurship award following last year's award to Symple Surgical, Inc. The 2017 award will enable POBA Medical to continue it's market penetration and growth trajectory in the contract manufacturing space with expanded expertise in thermoplastic balloon development and technology transfer. POBA Medical became operational in November 2016 with a team of four engineers and already has attracted firm orders from China, India, Japan, Russia, and of course the country of California.
