Inside UC Irvine startup AquaTeX and one neurosurgeon’s push for better tools
As a neurointerventional surgeon, Dr. Ichiro Yuki spends his days navigating some of the body’s narrowest and most fragile passageways. Through tiny catheters threaded into blood vessels, he treats aneurysms, strokes, vascular malformations and other potentially devastating conditions deep inside the brain.
What still surprises many people, including Yuki himself, is what some of those procedures routinely rely on. One of the standard materials physicians inject into blood vessels is essentially a medical version of super glue. Another commonly used material depends on a powerful organic solvent that Yuki compares to nail polish remover.
“You probably don’t believe it,” he says with a laugh. “But this is the most commonly used material for this purpose on the market right now.”
For years, Yuki and other specialists adapted to the limitations. Some materials had an unfortunate tendency to stick to catheters. Others were difficult to control or harsh on delicate vessels. In certain procedures, surgeons had to work carefully to avoid trapping a catheter inside the brain.
“No one believes that we are using ideal materials,” Yuki says, referring to injectable materials used to block blood flow to aneurysms, vascular malformations and tumors. “We just got used to them.”
The consequences of those limitations have sometimes been severe. FDA reports describe more than 50 cases in which catheters became trapped during brain procedures using one common embolic material. Multiple deaths were linked to the complications. Other materials can damage blood vessels or lose effectiveness over time as blocked vessels reopen.
The tools, in other words, have never been as good as the procedures they’re meant to support. Surgeons already understood the limitations. The harder part was building something better and navigating the years of testing, regulation and funding required to bring it into medicine. Instead of accepting “good enough,” Yuki decided to try building something better.
What emerged was AquaTeX Medical and its Aqua Embolic System, or AES, a hydrogel material intended to move through tiny blood vessels without sticking to the catheter delivering it. AES is designed to remain visible under X-ray imaging as it moves through tiny blood vessels, allowing physicians to track the material more precisely during procedures.
Beyond the OR
Fixing the material problem turned out to be only the beginning. To move the technology beyond the lab, Yuki had to learn an entirely different discipline involving patents, funding, regulation and startup formation. At UC Irvine, Beall Applied Innovation became his entry point into that world.
After completing his neurosurgical training in Japan, he arrived at UCLA in 2002 to learn emerging catheter‑based neurointerventional techniques for treating brain aneurysms from inside the blood vessels, rather than through open skull surgery. The techniques were minimally invasive and transformative, and Yuki wanted to work at the forefront of that transformation.
“It was a very novel technique at that time,” he says.
He spent eight years at UCLA refining both his clinical and research skills before returning to Japan, where he continued treating patients and researching catheter-based devices at Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo. But eventually, he found himself drawn back to the United States, where he’s now a clinical professor in UC Irvine’s Department of Neurological Surgery.
One major draw was the flexibility to pursue both clinical work and research at the same time. At UC Irvine, he was able to split his time evenly between treating patients and developing new technologies.
Another reason was the infrastructure surrounding translational medicine and innovation. Yuki had already experienced how difficult commercialization could be in Japan. When he first approached an intellectual property office there about one of his ideas years ago, he recalls being told there was no IP officer available and that he would have to navigate the process himself. UC Irvine offered a dramatically different experience.
“I was introduced to the senior IP officers immediately,” he says. “They guided me through everything.”
That guidance included programs such as the Proof of Product (PoP) grant program, I-Corps, a National Science Foundation-funded program that helps researchers conduct customer discovery, and Wayfinder, a startup support program now replaced by customized venture support through UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation. UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation also helped connect Yuki with non-dilutive federal funding opportunities, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.
“They know how to support new technologies and help them grow,” he says of the UC Irvine ecosystem. “I feel so lucky that I was able to come back and join the team here.”
The Material Problem
The idea for a better embolic material had actually started years earlier. Yuki turned to Dr. Kousaku Ohkawa, a well-known polymer scientist in Japan. Their original goal was neurointervention. Yuki wanted a better option for delicate procedures inside the brain. Over nearly a decade, the researchers cycled through multiple prototypes, gradually discovering how difficult it was to balance softness, visibility and flow behavior inside living blood vessels. Eventually, the team arrived at a material that could do all three. The result was AES, a hydrogel material intended to solve many of the problems surgeons had simply learned to work around.
Today, AquaTeX Medical includes a multidisciplinary team spanning medicine, polymer science and business development. The company’s leadership also includes UC Irvine faculty members Dr. Frank P.K. Hsu, the Denny and Betty Tsai Endowed Chair of Neurological Surgery, and Dr. Shuichi Suzuki, professor of clinical neurological surgery.
As development progressed, so did the company’s focus. Although the idea began in neurointervention, the company concluded that reaching brain applications first would likely be too slow and expensive. The realization forced a difficult pivot. The team realized the largest near-term opportunity was outside the brain, particularly in treating hypervascular tumors such as certain liver and kidney cancers. These tumors rely heavily on blood flow to grow, and physicians often try to block those vessels before surgery or alongside other therapies.
“It’s basically like starving the tumor,” Yuki says.
The material may also allow for longer-lasting vessel closure. In preclinical studies, blood vessels treated with conventional embolic particles reopened within about a month, while vessels treated with AES remained blocked throughout a six-month observation period. That durability could help the company compete in the growing market for procedures that block blood flow to liver tumors and other vascular abnormalities, which AquaTeX estimates at $3 billion to $6 billion worldwide.
Don’t Believe Yourself
One of Yuki’s biggest mindset shifts came through the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. At first, he believed his perspective gave him a clear understanding of the market. Not only was he one of the inventors, but a physician and user of the product. I-Corps challenged that assumption.
“They told us, ‘Don’t believe yourself,’” he says. “‘You need third opinions, fifth opinions, 10th opinions.’”
All in all, Yuki and his collaborators interviewed more than 30 physicians, surgeons, interventional radiologists and industry experts. The conversations revealed challenges and opportunities the team had not initially considered. Some feedback reinforced the team’s direction. Other insights helped refine their strategy, including the decision to pursue body interventional applications before neurovascular ones.
“It was beyond our imagination,” Yuki says of the process.
The entrepreneurial education also brought Yuki into contact with experienced business leaders. Through Wayfinder, he met an advisor who later became part of the company’s leadership. Parisa Khosropour, a former senior executive at Thermo Fisher Scientific and past president of Tech Coast Angels, one of the largest angel investor networks in California, eventually joined AquaTeX as its Chief Operating Officer. Her background bridging scientific enterprise and early-stage investment has been central to the company’s business development.
The startup has secured roughly $1 million in non-dilutive funding through grants and translational research support, including NIH funding. The company also holds two patents, including one licensed from UC Irvine and another from Shinshu University in Japan. Their next major milestone is raising approximately $3 million to complete the rigorous studies required for FDA review. For Yuki, the entrepreneurial journey has reinforced a lesson common in medical innovation. Even promising technologies can fail long before they ever reach patients. Not because the ideas are bad, but because the distance between invention and clinical use is so long. It requires money, regulatory strategy, institutional support and people willing to navigate systems far outside their original expertise.
AquaTeX Medical still faces many of those hurdles. But Yuki sees the company as evidence that universities can become more than places where discoveries happen. He hopes the same infrastructure that helped launch AquaTeX will eventually make it easier for the next clinician with an improbable idea to build something better.
“I am a neurointerventionist. My main passion behind why I want to do this work is because I wanted to improve the treatment for my patients,” Yuki says. “My hope is to get this material approved by the FDA and into clinical use. That would be my way of giving back.”