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About Aspire
Our Story

_ Aspiration Therapy was developed as a collaboration between three physicians to provide an effective, low-risk method of weight loss for the obese patient. The three physicians, Dr. Sam Klein, Dr. Moshe Shike, and Dr. Steve Solomon, combining expertise in obesity, nutrition, gastroenterology, medical device discovery, and PEG (percutaneous endoscopicgastrostomy) tubes, modified a PEG tube to make it suitable for weight loss purposes. PEG tubes, used for long-term feeding of patients that cannot take in food orally, have been used for 30 years and have an established record of safety.  

Their first patient with the modified tube lost 100% of her excess weight in 2005, and had maintained her weight-loss at five years post-procedure. Based on the success of early patients utilizing the modified PEG tube, Aspire Bariatrics* was formed in 2005 to commercialize the device, resulting in the development of the AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System. Katherine Crothall, Ph.D., Aspire’s President and CEO, joined the Company in November 2010.
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About the Founders

__ Dr. Samuel Klein is the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science and Director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and a leading researcher in obesity, metabolism, and nutrition with more than 300 publications in these fields.

Dr. Moshe Shike is Attending Physician and Director of Clinical Nutrition at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and a gastroenterologist with extensive expertise in endoscopic enteral access and nutritional therapy.

Dr. Stephen Solomon is Attending Physician and Chief of Interventional Radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and is an accomplished interventional radiologist with a long history in medical devices. Aspire Bariatrics was founded in 2005 by Drs. Klein, Shike, and Solomon.