Year: 2013-14

Company: NuSil

Liaison(s): Jim Lambert, Scott Mraz, Brian Reilly

NuSil is the leading global manufacturer of medical grade silicone. Founded in 1979, NuSil is a privately held company headquartered in Carpentaria, California. Notably, with approximately 400 global employees, NuSil has additional facilities located in California, Texas, and France. The company focuses on the manufacturing of silicone compounds for the healthcare, aerospace, electronics, and photonics industries. The healthcare division is further divided into long-term and short-term implantable silicones, skin care, and drug delivery. During phase I of the NuSil TMP project, the team was assigned the task of identifying novel commercial opportunities for silicone drug delivery devices. To complete this task, the team evaluated areas of women’s health, wound healing, and antimicrobials. For each of these market opportunities, the team investigated market size, current research, competing biomaterials in addition to the intellectual property surrounding the use of silicone in each of these defined markets. Upon the identification of women’s health as the most promising commercial opportunity through secondary research and KOL interviews, the team was tasked with identifying strong opportunities in women’s health. We successfully characterized over 30 disease indications in women’s health, and ranked them according to market opportunity. The top four disease indications were the selected for further market research analysis. The team’s analysis included areas ranging from unmet clinical need, disease prevalence and demographics, adoption rates, socio-economic analysis, technical feasibility, regulatory pathways, IP considerations and risk management. Ultimately, the NuSil TMP team produced an abbreviated business plan, which NuSil can use as a tool for the identification of new investment opportunities.