Treating burns, battlefield wounds and pressure sores with pressurized oxygen has been a controversial practice for decades. That’s because it has been largely confined to several dozen specialized and very expensive hyperbaric oxygen chambers of debatable effectiveness.

Northridge-based Numotech Inc. is looking to change all that. Using technology developed by a UCLA researcher, Numotech founder Robert Felton is trying to bring oxygen therapy for wound care to the masses. He is marketing a portable hyperbaric oxygen kit that can be deployed near battlefields, at accident scenes or even in the home.

These “Numobag” kits which run about $200 consist of specially treated plastic bags designed to wrap around the wounded portion of the body and hold pressurized oxygen that’s pumped in. The pressurized oxygen stops bacteria from forming and promotes healing. This treatment is applied for a few hours a day for up to four days per week.

Scores of Numobags have been used in field hospitals in Iraq to treat victims of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Here in the U.S., they’ve been used to treat accident and burn victims, as well as for treatment of infected pressure sores, or so-called bed sores, among the wheelchair-bound or the elderly.

“This high-pressure oxygen therapy allows us to treat wounds that otherwise would lead to amputations or even death,” Felton said.

Yet after six years, Numotech has yet to achieve a mass-market breakthrough. Its 2006 revenues were $12.7 million, enough to turn a modest operating profit that is then plowed back into the firm’s other products and ventures.

One challenge has been resistance from physicians wary of overhyped promises of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Also, while the kit itself is portable, it still needs oxygen pumped in from canisters that have to be lugged to the scene and frequently replenished. That means limited acceptance for the therapy as a time-saving, cost-cutting therapy.

Felton says he is confident that given time, the Numobag will prove itself and gain more acceptance among physicians and nurses.

Yvonne Anderson, a registered nurse in the Cape Cod, Mass. area, said she is using the Numobag on an elderly diabetic woman with a pressure sore on her elbow so deep that it had penetrated through the skin to the bone beneath.

“When I first came to her, her elbow was so bad that it looked like the entire arm would have to be amputated,” she said. “After just six weeks of therapy, the pressure sore has gotten much smaller, new skin has grown back and the arm has been saved.”

Conventional hyperbaric oxygen therapy would not have been as effective, she said, because it can only be used for limited periods of time and the entire body is exposed, including the lungs, which are sensitive to very high levels of oxygen. Also, it’s far more preferable to treat elderly and disabled patients in their homes.

But Anderson acknowledged that more widespread use of the Numobag will depend on better marketing and the ability to reduce the need to replenish the oxygen canisters.

So far, most of the outside funding Numotech has received about $17 million to date has come in the form of research grants and small private investments. Virtually none of the money has been used for marketing.

Possible solution

On the oxygen tank issue, Felton is working in collaboration with the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico on a potential solution: a portable oxygen generator that could plug into a vehicle electric charger and would essentially concentrate oxygen from the air. If successful, it would eliminate the need for the tanks.

But bringing this oxygen generator to market will turn on another high-stakes gamble that Numotech has made. The company has staked much of its future and numerous other potential product lines on a first-of-its-kind joint venture with a company deep inside Russia’s former secret Cold War apparatus. The 2003 deal between Numotech, the Sandia lab and Russian company Spektr-Conversion LLC, represents one of the boldest attempts yet to employ former Russian nuclear workers in other, useful pursuits so they won’t be tempted to sell nuclear technology or weapons to rogue states or groups.

Under the deal, up to 400 former nuclear workers are to assemble several products for Numotech, including the oxygen generator and special wheelchair seats and cushions with inflatable bags meant to prevent pressure sores. The big advantage for Numotech is that Russian workers even highly skilled ones don’t command high wages.

Yet, predictably, the joint venture has had a rocky history and that’s before the first product has come off an assembly line. Spektr-Conversion was located inside one of the former Soviet Union’s ultra-restrictive zones where virtually no outsiders can enter and no one from the inside could leave. “Trying to do business with a company in this zone was a nightmare,” Felton said.

A deal was reached where Spektr-Conversion would set up shop right outside the zone. The new factory is almost complete and should begin operations before year’s end, Felton said.

Assuming that the plant does open on time, it will take a year or so to ramp up production. By that time, Felton hopes to have a line of products ready for mass-production, including the oxygen generator and the company’s inflatable cushions.

In the meantime, Felton is counting on Numobag sales and a pending capital infusion of up to $40 million. Felton said he expects a $10 million loan from the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) to close next month; once that closes, Felton said a private investment firm has indicated it is willing to put in $30 million in additional capital.

Assuming this capital infusion goes through, it would be the largest round of funding Numotech has received since its founding in 1990.

Back then, Felton, who had worked for years as a clinician in Veterans’ Administration facilities, was focused on improving treatment from wheelchair-bound and elderly patients suffering from pressure sores.

Felton came up with the idea of cushions with inflatable bags inside them. He enlisted the aid of a small engineering company executive, Joe Sember, to come up with prototypes for bags that expanded and contracted. The idea was to constantly shift pressure points in order to prevent pressure sores from forming.

But these projects were placed on the back burner after Felton had a chance meeting with Dr. Madeline Heng, a researcher in portable oxygen treatment therapy at UCLA. Feng had developed a plastic bag that could be pumped full of oxygen and then placed around a patient’s wound. Heng showed him impressive clinical results.

“I immediately saw a broader application for this in the wound care market. The only oxygen skin therapy available at the time was in these huge hyperbaric oxygen chambers where each treatment costs thousands of dollars,” Felton said.

The Numobag eventually came to the attention of the military, which saw opportunities to use them in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The biggest factor in treating battlefield wounds is time: Every hour that passes increases the chance that the wound becomes infected and amputation is more likely,” said retired army Colonel Jos & #233; Negr & #243;n, who is working with Numotech to obtain contracts from the Department of Defense to place the Numobag is as many military facilities as possible. “With the portable Numobag, you can begin treatment right at the field hospital and not have to wait to fly the soldier out to (the) Ramstein (air base in Germany) or to Walter Reed,”

Time is also the key factor for Numotech as it looks ahead, especially if the Russian plant encounters any further significant delays.

“The key for the company is to avoid having the Russian plant become a sinkhole for Numotech’s resources,” said Edmund Gish, a consultant formerly with the African-American owned M.R. Beal Co., a boutique investment bank in New York that has raised capital on behalf of Numotech.