Case Studies
- Helping lenders serve a growing industry: environmental services
- Outsourcing legal remedies: Lear Corporation depends on Bodman
- Retaining a critical asset: Detroit Medical Center fights to keep the Karmanos Cancer Institute
- Relieving debt for a Korean War veteran
- Advancing the development of an artificial lung
- Setting a new precedent with an innovative labor agreement
- Marrying an auto-industry pioneer to a Japanese suitor
- Helping the homeless solve their legal impediments
Advancing the development of an artificial lung
Every year in the U.S., approximately 50,000 people die from lung failure, and approximately 250 people die from respiratory disease while waiting for lung transplants. Many of these patients could be saved with a dependable artificial lung. Medical device developers are racing to commercialize one.
MC3, a medical device pioneer based in Ann Arbor, has designed and patented BioLung. The size of a soda can, BioLung works outside the body, where it performs the vital function of removing carbon dioxide from the bloodstream and delivering oxygen. This gives the natural lungs time to heal while patients recover from injury or illness, or until donor lungs become available.
Bodman's Susan Kornfield has worked with MC3 for 20 years. She and Forrest Dillon of Bodman structured the technology agreement and equity arrangment with MC3's German venture, Novalung GmbH. BioLung is currently undergoing testing for FDA submission.
Bodman lawyers have also assisted in the licensing of technology from the University of Michigan, the funding of innovative research programs, collaborative product development and marketing with medical device companies, and technology development for aerospace enterprises.