Medical devices & diagnostics · Stroke neuroprotection
Voyage Biomedical
A Berkeley startup that tried to cool the brain from inside a vein, published one preclinical study, and was bought by Penumbra. There is no trial, no FDA record, and no SEC filing anywhere that names the deal.
The pig that walked
Before the autumn of 2019, a Yorkshire pig had the blood supply to its brain clamped off for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of complete cerebral circulatory arrest is, in the language of the study that followed, otherwise catastrophic. A published porcine control group treated the same way without cooling scored 241 on a 500 point neurological deficit scale at 24 hours, where 0 is normal and 500 is death. Those animals seized and never regained consciousness.
This pig scored 10. At 24 hours it was eating, drinking and walking on its own.
The difference was temperature. Chilled saline had been run backwards up the animal’s internal jugular vein, pulling brain temperature down to about 31 degrees Celsius while the rectal probe stayed several degrees warmer. A second pig, arrested for fifteen minutes and cooled to 29.3 degrees, scored 26. A third, held in arrest for ninety minutes, seized and was euthanized.
Three animals and one normothermic perfused human cadaver. That is the entire published evidence base for Voyage Biomedical, and it is the reason a public medical device company bought the company.
A good idea with a bad record
Cooling the brain to protect it is not a fringe notion. It is standard in aortic arch surgery and after cardiac arrest, and it works in newborns deprived of oxygen at birth. In animal stroke models it is the most reliably protective intervention anyone has found.
In human stroke it has failed repeatedly, and those failures are the essential context for anything in this field. ICTuS 2, an American trial of intravascular whole body cooling, planned 1,600 patients and stopped at 120. EuroHYP-1, a European phase III trial funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programme, planned 1,500 patients and stopped at 98 across 23 sites because recruitment was too slow. Neither trial showed benefit. In both, the sample was far too small to show anything either way. In EuroHYP-1, roughly two thirds of the patients assigned to cooling never reached the target temperature at all, mainly because they shivered.
Shivering is the recurring problem. Chilling an awake stroke patient makes the body fight back, and fighting back means heat, discomfort, drugs to suppress it, and pneumonia. Hence the argument Voyage and every other selective cooling company makes: cool the brain, leave the body alone.
Three founders, one of them a surgical resident
Y Combinator lists three founders. Justin Olshavsky studied mechanical engineering at Clemson, then took a dual master’s across UC Berkeley and UCSF in bioengineering and translational medicine. Robert Schultz is a physician; a 2018 Berkeley student design group page describes him as a cardiac surgery resident in his fifth year. Bridget Vaughan is first author on the company’s only published paper. A founder genealogy database also names Aurko Shaw and Ikennah Browne, a physician and co-author on that paper.
The work started at Berkeley. The paper credits two funders: Voyage Biomedical itself, and an Innovation Catalyst grant from Berkeley’s Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, a student grant program whose largest tier is capped at $2,000. Every author declared stock in the company.
Eight months, three accelerators, then quiet
PitchBook records three accelerator or incubator events between January 1, 2019 and August 20, 2019, and names Berkeley SkyDeck, Creative Destruction Lab and Y Combinator as former investors. Creative Destruction Lab’s own listing places Voyage in the CDL-Rockies Prime stream for the 2019/20 cohort. Y Combinator put the company in its Summer 2019 batch with a team of three.
A patent application went in first. A US provisional was filed on June 1, 2018, and the international application that claims it, WO2019232488A1, published in December 2019 under the title Venous infusion catheter and methods for its use. It covers a central venous catheter with an inflatable balloon that can divert perfusion backwards toward the brain, framed for use during in-hospital cardiac arrest.
Then the trail ends. Y Combinator’s directory marks the company Acquired and says, in four words, that Penumbra bought it. No press release, no price, no date. Penumbra, an Alameda neurovascular firm that reported $1.40 billion of revenue for 2025, agreed in January 2026 to be acquired by Boston Scientific at an enterprise value of about $14.5 billion. That announcement describes Penumbra’s neurovascular line as access, stroke revascularization and neuro embolization. Cooling is not mentioned.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Preclinical study | Brain Circulation, 2019. Porcine model, n = 3, plus one perfused human cadaver. Cooling to 29.3 and 31.2 degrees Celsius gave 24 hour deficit scores of 26 and 10 after 15 and 30 minutes of arrest, against a historical uncooled control of 241. The 90 minute animal was not rescued. Company funded; all five authors declared stock. | Public record |
| Human data | None. The cadaver work is a thermodynamic feasibility test, not a clinical study. | Not found |
| Registered trials | A ClinicalTrials.gov sponsor search for Voyage Biomedical returns zero studies, checked September 24, 2026. | Not found |
| FDA | No 510(k), PMA, breakthrough designation or registration in openFDA. Nothing here is cleared or approved for any use. | Not found |
| Intellectual property | PCT application WO2019232488A1, filed May 31, 2019 from a June 1, 2018 US provisional, published December 5, 2019. PitchBook attributes it to Voyage and marks it Inactive. | Public record |
| Patents, as described | The Clemson Alumni Association says the invention led to patents. A Justia search finds no granted US patent assigned to the company, and the one published application is inactive. | Differs from the record |
| Federal funding | No NIH or NSF award. The only outside research money named in the paper is a Berkeley student design grant. | Not found |
| Acquisition | Stated by Y Combinator, PitchBook and the Clemson Alumni Association. No price, no date, and zero mentions across all SEC filings since 2001. | Company and aggregator stated |
Read plainly: the science was real, small and early. A three animal study against a historical control is a starting point, not a result. Between it and a device a hospital could use sit a large animal stroke model, a safety study, a regulatory pathway and a randomized trial, none of which Voyage began. The acquisition is the only outcome on the board, and it is documented nowhere that a filing would have to be accurate.
What to watch
- Whether a cooling product ever appears in Penumbra’s catalogue. As of the January 2026 Boston Scientific announcement, it has not.
- Whether Boston Scientific closes the Penumbra deal in 2026, and whether this technology survives the integration.
- Whether WO2019232488A1 ever produces a granted patent in any jurisdiction under any assignee.
- The trials other groups are still running: COOLHEAD-2b in Auckland, a completed Hybernia Medical post-thrombectomy study, and intra-arterial cooling trials in Beijing.
- Whether faster cooling changes the answer. A 2025 pilot reached target in a median of 40 minutes in 14 patients, and its authors still call the case unproven.
In their words
“Neurologic assessment of animals receiving this therapy reflected substantial neuroprotection in animals undergoing both 15 min and 30 min of otherwise catastrophic complete cerebral circulatory arrest.”
Bridget C. Vaughan and colleagues, Brain Circulation, 2019 · Company funded study
“the optimal depth and duration of selective cooling for neuroprotection in the setting of stroke have yet to be determined”
Vaughan and colleagues, same paper, 2019 · Company funded study
“BCV, MERJ, ILB, JMO, RDS hold stock in Voyage Biomedical Inc.”
Conflicts of interest statement, Brain Circulation, 2019 · Public record
“Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) exceeds all other neuroprotective therapies in the wealth of robust evidence supporting its efficacy.”
Mohammed A. Almekhlafi and colleagues, Brain Circulation editorial, 2019 · Independent
“Unfortunately, the benefits of TH have not been shown in ischemic stroke patients despite multiple trials.”
Almekhlafi and colleagues, same editorial, 2019 · Independent
“it was not possible to achieve cooling target of body temperature of 34-35 °C, mainly because of shivering and discomfort”
Nicolas Martinez-Majander on EuroHYP-1, European Stroke Organisation, 2019 · Independent
“Protocol changes designed to reduce pneumonia risk appeared to fail, although the sample is small.”
Patrick Lyden and colleagues, ICTuS 2 results, Stroke, 2016 · Independent
“The invention led to patents and awards for product design and medical innovation and to Voyage Biomedical’s acquisition by Penumbra, a global healthcare company.”
Clemson Alumni Association award citation for Justin Olshavsky, 2024 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordSelective retrograde cerebral cooling in complete cerebral circulatory arrest
- Public recordWO2019232488A1, Venous infusion catheter and methods for its use
- Public recordClinicalTrials.gov, openFDA and NIH RePORTER searches, all zero results
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search, zero filings mentioning Voyage Biomedical
- Public recordJustia patent search, no granted US patent assigned to Voyage Biomedical
- IndependentTherapeutic hypothermia in stroke: Quo Vadis?
- IndependentESJ Comment: Therapeutic hypothermia for acute ischaemic stroke
- Public recordEuroHYP-1 trial record, EU FP7 grant agreement 278709
- IndependentResults of the ICTuS-2 Trial
- IndependentThe SISCO pilot study of rapid convective cooling
- IndependentJustin Olshavsky ’16 Receives Roaring10 Award
- IndependentVoyage Biomedical company profile
- IndependentVoyage Biomedical, CDL-Rockies, Prime stream, cohort 2019/20
- CompanyVoyage Biomedical company page, status Acquired
- PartnerBrain-saving catheter project page
- Public recordThe Jacobs Institute Innovation Catalysts grant program terms
- CompanyBoston Scientific announces agreement to acquire Penumbra, Inc.
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
