Building a legacy on ultrasound technology in a Trumbull industrial park
TRUMBULL – For George Lewis Jr., you can say ultrasound research has been a part of his life dating back to when he was 5 years old. That’s because his father, George K. Lewis, Sr., spent many waking hours in his ultrasonic lab.
The elder Lewis, who died in 2019, was renowned for his patents in the ultrasound space. He was an ultrasound engineer and product development designer. One of his most noted patents was for a device that was used to help locate the bullets of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II when would-be assassins shot them in March and May 1981, respectively.
“That was his claim to fame,” his son who is founder, president and CEO of ZetrOZ Systems in Trumbull, a manufacturer of wearable, non-invasive ultrasound-based medical devices. “His device saved the Pope’s and president’s lives because his ultrasonic scope that went down the throat was used so they could locate the bullets ultrasonically.”
He credits his passion for everything ultrasound with his many years in his father’s home lab, where he worked from middle school through high school. That led him to complete his undergraduate and doctoral studies in ultrasound device development and research on mechanobiology at Cornell University and University of Miami.
“Many, many years ago, I was doing gioblastoma research,” Lewis said. “And we had these very cool ultrasound devices to enhance drug delivery to blastomas. Because it’s a very aggressive form of brain cancer, there’s not a good way of treating it.”
What came out of his doctoral work at University of Miami is the brand that makes ZetrOZ Systems work – SAM, or simply “Sustained Acoustic Medicine.” That is the medical device his company has been developing for more than a decade.
“My dad was an ultrasound diagnostic guy,” he said. “He was more focused on the therapeutic uses of ultrasound technology. SAM actually spun out of the bone growth stimulator area.”
It was during graduate school that Lewis devised the idea to apply ultrasound for multiple hours on a daily basis to facilitate the healing of soft tissue injuries.
“The basic premise of SAM is it is a daily ultrasonic stimulator,” he explained. “Ultrasound has mechanical and thermal mechanisms of action. A lot of people are familiar with ultrasound for diagramming. But it can also be used for heating tissue which increases circulation. Increase circulation then there is more blood flow and faster healing.
“There’s also a mechanical effect whereby you apply the ultrasound you increase cell growth and remodeling.”
He pointed out that SAM, which operates on only 3.7 volts, is unique because it is the first FDA-approved home used ultrasonic system that can be applied with a patch that delivers the daily treatment. The idea is that the ultrasound system treats the pain by focusing on the patient’s source of the pain, which is usually a joint, he said. Using a water-based gel similar to what is used for ultrasound imaging for pregnant women, SAM is hooked up to an electrical impulse system that helps the patient manage pain.
“Instead of going to a doctor’s office or a physical therapist where ultrasound is part of a rehab regime, now you have a wearable technology that is self-applied,” he said. “But it must be a prescription. You, the patient, then get trained on how to use it.”
The patients
Many of the patients that use SAM are athletes in nearly every professional sports league in the U.S. Lewis said they use it to treat soft tissue injuries, tendons, micro-trauma. “If you are pitcher and you don’t want to go through ‘Tommy John’ elbow surgeries, you are putting on the SAM patch every day to help with the tissue remodeling to avoid the injury,” Lewis said.
Additionally, ZetrOZ has quite a few military patients through contracts with the Department of Defense. “They are high assets such as an Air Force pilot,” he said.
But the biggest demographic that benefits from SAM is the arthritic population. That is how ZetrOZ wound up getting more than $2 million in funding recently from the National Institutes of Health, to refine its sonophoresis patch, which is designed to treat knee osteoarthritis.
Lewis pointed out that no matter uses the SAM patch system, the primary customer is always the insurance carrier, who pays for the service and medical device. The patient is the end-user or owner of the device and is responsible for buying more patches when necessary.
Creating a new legacy
The system is made to last three years, Lewis said. Typically, the regime for a soft tissue injury is about eight weeks, he said. But if you have arthritic joints, the pain will subside after eight weeks, he said. Then you will not have to use it.
“But, two months, three months, four months later, that inflammation response will start kicking in again,” he said. “And you are back on it because it is a chronic disease.
“We’re not going to solve your rheumatic disease. We’re just going to inhibit the rheumatic response and slow the degradation of the joint space.”
When all was said and done, Lewis Sr. had built a legacy that Lewis Jr. has taken to a new level in an area of science that addresses pain management while changing the lives of patients both young and old and athletic and sedentary.
“My dad got buried with a SAM device, a transducer and a bottle of rum, literally,” Lewis said. And now the younger Lewis hopes to cement his own legacy just as he has laid down roots in Trumbull with his family of five children down the block from his own lab.
