Relavo’s mission is to enrich the lives of people with kidney failure by making home dialysis safer and more accessible.

Relavo is a medical device company that is changing the way that kidney failure patients receive treatment. We are a female-founded team of biomedical engineers from Johns Hopkins University seeking to make home dialysis more accessible by minimizing the risk of infection with our technology, the PeritoneX.

PROBLEM

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a form of treatment for kidney failure. It allows patients to receive treatment daily from the comfort of their own homes instead of spending 15-20 hours a week in a dialysis clinic. However, PD is under-utilized as a treatment - only 10% of patients with kidney failure receive PD treatment. This is because of the risk of infection.

Peritonitis is an infection of the peritoneal membrane commonly caused by bacteria entering the patient’s body from touch or air contaminations of PD supplies during treatment setup. Connections at high risk of contamination are circled in the image. Microbes from these contamination events are flushed into the patient’s body when dialysis begins. Peritonitis occurs in 30% of patients every year and requires hospitalization in 50% of cases.

TECHNOLOGY

Relavo is changing the way patients on PD receive dialysis. The PeritoneX® is an in-line connection device that aims to internally disinfect dialysis tubes at all connection sites in the PD system.

Features:

Compatible with existing PD systems
Can achieve a greater than 5-log reduction against spectrum of peritonitis-causing bacteria in a laboratory setting
Reduced risk of secondary contamination event because patients can receive treatment with our connector still in place