Avinger Provides Update on U.S. Intellectual Property Portfolio

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 13, 2018 -- Avinger, Inc. (Nasdaq:AVGR), a leading developer of innovative treatments for peripheral artery disease (PAD), today announced three recent additions to its U.S. intellectual property portfolio.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") has issued U.S. Patent No. 9,854,979, titled “Chronic Total Occlusion Crossing Devices with Imaging.” In addition, the USPTO has provided an Issue Notification for U.S. Patent Application No. 13/752,325, titled “Catheter System and Method for Boring Through Blocked Vascular Passages,” which is expected to issue as U.S. Patent No. 9,918,734 on March 20, 2018 and has provided a Notice of Allowance for certain claims in U.S. Patent Application No. 14/433,786, titled “Occlusion-Crossing Devices.”

All three of these patents relate to Avinger’s portfolio of technologies used for crossing completely blocked arteries, also referred to as chronic total occlusions or CTOs, in both the peripheral and coronary arteries. The Company’s Ocelot device is the only image-guided CTO-crossing catheter cleared for sale in the U.S. by the FDA. It demonstrated 97% success in crossing CTOs in peripheral arteries and a 98% freedom from major adverse events in the 100-patient CONNECT II study, which supported the device’s FDA clearance in 2012.

“These positive actions by the USPTO help to establish Avinger’s technology leadership in the field of CTO crossing,” commented Jeff Soinski, Avinger’s president and CEO. “Products covered by these patents provide valuable options to interventional physicians and their patients, in many cases allowing PAD patients to be successfully treated with minimally-invasive techniques rather than surgical bypass.”

Avinger’s extensive intellectual property portfolio now includes 119 patents and applications, including 19 issued and allowed U.S. cases, 23 pending U.S. applications, 29 issued and allowed cases outside the U.S., and 48 pending applications outside the U.S. The portfolio has broad applicability in the areas of atherectomy, CTO-crossing and intravascular imaging.

About Avinger, Inc.
Avinger is a commercial-stage medical device company that designs and develops the first-ever image-guided, catheter-based system that diagnoses and treats patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD). Avinger is dedicated to radically changing the way vascular disease is treated through its Lumivascular platform, which currently consists of the Lightbox imaging console, the Ocelot family of chronic total occlusion (CTO) catheters, and the Pantheris^® family of atherectomy devices. Avinger is based in Redwood City, CA. For more information, please visit www.avinger.com.

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Avinger, Inc.
(650) 241-7900
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Avinger, Inc.
(650) 241-7917
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