Gish Announces a 40% Expansion of its GBS Coating Clean Room Facility to Accommodate Increased Coated Products Demand

CardioTech International, Inc. (Amex: CTE – News) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gish Biomedical, Inc. (“Gish”) located in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA has initiated manufacturing of heparin-coated products. Orders for these products are expected to generate revenues of several million dollars over the next 12-24 months.
To meet the production demands, Gish is currently expanding its coating room for heparin-coated products and tubing packs and to prepare for future additional capacity. The coating clean room expansion will provide an additional 40% of clean room GBS coating manufacturing space. Gish is also procuring and building new coating equipment capable of doubling the production capacity of the current process.

Gish has developed a heparin coating that is applied to the blood-contacted surfaces of its cardiopulmonary bypass products and circuits. The coating consists of a hydrophilic biopolymer that immobilizes heparin, a naturally-occurring anticoagulant. The base biopolymer irreversibly adsorbs onto the artificial material surfaces. Heparin crosslinks to the base biopolymer through bipolar amide covalent bonding.

Douglas Whittaker, President of Gish, stated: “Initial clinical evaluations indicate that our GBS (Gish Biocompatible Surface) coated products are performing extremely well. We are very pleased by this encouraging news, and look forward to our future sales successes in this lucrative market.”

CardioTech, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gish Biomedical, designs, manufactures, and markets disposable medical devices for various surgical specialties including cardiovascular, surgery, orthopedics, and oncology.

Gish’s principal products include custom cardiovascular tubing systems, blood reservoirs, cardioplegia delivery systems, oxygenators, central venous access catheters and ports, and blood recovery devices for post-operative use in orthopedic surgeries. Gish markets its products to 300 hospitals worldwide through a combination of direct sales representatives and specialty medical distributors. The Gish subsidiary is expected to generate over $18 million in revenues this fiscal year.

CardioTech International, Inc. maintains operations in Woburn, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Minnesota and Rancho Santa Margarita, California. CardioTech focuses on developing and marketing devices to treat cardiovascular disease.

Current revenue sources for CardioTech include patented medical grade polyurethanes for use in implantable medical devices, disposable devices manufactured on an OEM basis for Fortune 100 companies, cardiovascular tubing systems, arterial filters, oxygenators, cardioplegia delivery systems and oxygen saturation monitors. The Company also expects to begin the manufacturing and marketing of two FDA cleared wound dressing technologies in the near future. The wound dressings address a $300 million annual market. CardioTech is currently in clinical trials with a synthetic coronary artery bypass graft that addresses a potential market of $1.5 billion annually.

CardioTech believes that this release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Such statements are based on management’s beliefs and are subject to facts that could cause results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. For further information you are encouraged to review CardioTech’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.