M14Spine was featured by Crain's Detroit as one of the Most Innovative Companies.
Here are five things to know:
1. Mick Perez-Cruet, MD, a neurosurgeon in private practice at Michigan Head & Spine Institute in Southfield and chief of minimally invasive spine surgery at Beaumont Health System founded the company.
2. Dr. Perez-Cruet started the company in 2006 to turn his ideas into inventions and achieved 18 patents from 2008 to 2014. He had three patents in 2014.
3. The company is currently focused on M14Spine, a technology to reconstruct the spine using stem cells. The stem cells are used from umbilical cords and injected into spine discs to encourage "chondroprogenitor intervertebral regeneration."
4. The company has turned other ideas into fully-developed products, including the BoneBac Press, which takes excess bone powder from drilling and presses it into a substance that can be reused to shore up bone in the spine or other parts of the body, according to the report.
5. M14Spine will continue developing technologies, according to the report, and licensing them instead of transferring rights to other companies.