InfraReDx, Inc Opens Doors to Burlington Location

The InfraReDx, Inc. ribbon cutting ceremony at its new location at 34 Third Avenue, Burlington this Thursday hosted a big crowd, big names, big money, big technology… but even bigger scissors.

InfraReDx, Inc., “a medical device company providing intelligent cardiovascular diagnostic imaging technologies,” recently finished developing their newly expanded clean room for coronary catheter manufacturing. The technology developed there, the LipiScan IVUS Coronary Imaging System, allows doctors to more accurately locate “lipid core plaques,” which are suspected of causing the majority of heart attacks.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Jim Muller helped to develop the science and technology used in the LipiScan. He highlighted InfraReDx Inc.’s impressive progress, and the importance of the company’s work, noting that the catheters are already “in demand internationally.”

The technology, which took over 10 years to develop, was paid for with the help of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. President and CEO of the Center, Susan Windham-Bannister, Ph.D., personally thanked employees of InfraRedX, Inc. for their hard work in putting the $24.5 million the Center helped raise to good use.

Similarly, President and CEO of InfraReDx Inc. Don Southard lauded the “skilled workforce” he has found in Massachusetts after moving from Silicon Valley. After 6 months here, he said he is happy to be in “a state that cares about our jobs.”

Also present at the ceremony were Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray and Representative Charles Murphy, Majority Whip. Southard named the two as “true leaders” in helping the effort come to fruition.

Murray was proud of the achievement, and the $1.5 million investment he helped to make. “We know that investing pays off,” he said. “This is clearly a winning industry.” He recognized the success as the synergy between private companies, the Mass Life Sciences Center, manufacturing, government and academic institutions

Murphy was equally ecstatic, just full of more jokes. “I don’t really know anything about it,” Murphy joked about the technology, adding more reverentially, “but it really transforms the medical field.” A resident of Burlington, he told the InfraReDx employees that “This is truly fabulous, the work that you do.”

At the end of the ceremony, when everyone finished speaking and the hands of 75 InfraReDx Inc. employees stopped clapping, the scissors were taken out. Standing behind the red ribbon in front of the new clean room, the afternoon’s speakers positioned themselves for the cutting. Murray held a pair of red-handled scissors about two-and-a-half feet long – it comes with an investment that big.