Daniel Engebretson
University of South Dakota, SD·Biomedical Engineering
Narrowed arteries in the lower leg and the brain are hard to treat because the vessels are small. Patients with peripheral artery disease below the knee face a 25% death rate within five years, and many eventually need amputations.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
peripheral artery disease
below-the-knee arteries
cerebrovascular disease
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Assess the translation potential of a drug-coated angioplasty balloon for peripheral and cerebrovascular artery disease through first-hand interviews and investigation of the medical device industry in the I-Corps program.
- Evaluate a coating in which the drug is dissolved in an excipient matrix (inactive carrier), keeping it non-crystalline for high bioavailability and lower risk of shedding vessel-blocking particles.
- Build on pilot data showing drug delivery for up to 30 days to define how one balloon could treat multiple sites along long, diffuse arterial lesions in a single procedure.
More about the research
Cerebrovascular disease, which affects blood vessels in the brain, is the fifth most common cause of death and also lacks good treatment options. Existing tools such as drug-eluting stents and drug-coated balloons work poorly in these narrow vessels. This work develops a drug-coated angioplasty balloon (a balloon inflated inside a narrowed artery to open it) designed to treat these hard-to-reach areas.
Why it matters
Patients with below-the-knee peripheral artery disease, who face high death and amputation rates, and patients with cerebrovascular disease could benefit from a balloon coating that delivers drug more effectively to small arteries. Treating long lesions in a single procedure may reduce repeat surgeries and their side effects.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Bin Jiang
Northwestern University, IL·Biomedical Engineering
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The school
University of South Dakota: 4 labs on PI Pages, $28M a year on research, 52 research doctorates a year.
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