Junkosha introduced a new catheter liner category called Wrapped Liner at MD&M Midwest in Minneapolis, presenting the construction method as an alternative to established liner manufacturing routes. The company said the approach draws on its experience in fluoropolymer technologies.
Instead of extruding a complete tube, the process wraps PTFE film around a mandrel to build up the liner wall. Junkosha said it applies proprietary PTFE tape engineering and wrapping technology, and that by engineering the properties of the tape it can target a thin, uniform wall thickness while retaining strength. The company describes the resulting platform as combining high tensile strength, thin wall construction and flexibility.
What the construction method changes
Wall thickness constrains catheter design, because space occupied by the liner is space unavailable for reinforcement or other components. Junkosha said the thin, uniform wall it is targeting gives designers and manufacturers more freedom to specify finer braid or coil wire, or to reallocate that space elsewhere in the catheter construction.
Steve Maxson, founder of Maxson InSight Services, said in a statement distributed with the announcement that catheter engineers often describe profile as the dominant design requirement, but that a low-profile design involves more than reducing wall thickness. He said the device still has to resist kinking and ovalization while retaining the flexibility its application requires, and noted that extruded and film-cast liners are already available with very thin walls. In his view, the real opportunity lies in how thin-wall construction and strength balance against each other and change the way engineers approach catheter design.
Positioning against dip-coated and extruded liners
Kevin LaDow, chief sales officer of Junkosha USA, framed the launch as an addition to the two liner types currently supplied rather than a replacement for them. He described existing options as either dip-coated PTFE built up on a mandrel or extruded PTFE supplied as tubing cut to length, and said that heading into 2027 there is a need for a liner category that is manufactured differently and offers distinct benefits for small-format catheter OEMs, the customer group the company is targeting.
Junkosha said the balance of thin, strong and more uniform properties is central to new catheter development because it may allow greater flexibility in how reinforcement is configured. The company is presenting Wrapped Liner as a scalable platform intended to support a growing portfolio of liner solutions as catheter requirements evolve, and links the approach to next-generation devices intended to improve flexibility and reach a broader range of anatomies.
The announcement did not include specific performance figures, test results or a commercial availability timeline. The characterizations of design benefit come from the company and the expert it quoted, not from published comparative data on finished catheters.