Julio Palmaz (December 13, 1945 in La Plata, Argentina) is a doctor of vascular radiology at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
He moved with his family to the United States in 1977 and spent three years training in radiology at the University of California at Davis' Martinez Veterans Administration Medical Center.
He has worked as Chief of Angiography and Special Procedures in the radiology department at the University of Texas Health and Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) since 1983.
In 2019, Palmaz was part of a team awarded the Russ Prize "for innovations in medical devices that enable minimally invasive angioplasty treatment of advanced coronary artery disease.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, the leading treatment consisted of invasive bypass surgery, in which a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body is grafted onto the coronary artery, forming a detour around the afflicted region.
This was a substantial improvement over bypass surgery in terms of invasiveness, but unfortunately restenosis, a recurrence of arterial clogging, occurred in nearly 50% of patients after the balloon was removed.
Palmaz succeeded in creating a model that he was able to test in animals, including pigs and rabbits, with promising results; he also began shopping the device around to medical companies, but the response was lukewarm.
He also secured funding from a somewhat unlikely partner: Phil Romano, an entrepreneur who founded restaurant chains such as Fuddruckers and The Macaroni Grill, offered to put up $250,000 in exchange for a stake in the product, which Palmaz began co-developing with Dr. Richard Schatz, a cardiologist at Brooke Army Medical Center.
The trio, calling themselves the Expandable Graft Partnership, patented the stent technology in 1985 and presented it to a variety of large companies.
In early 2008, Dr. Palmaz, Steve Solomon, and other principals, along with private investors formed Palmaz Scientific to acquire thin-film and related intellectual property, equipment, employees and related assets from Nitinol Development (NDC), a Johnson & Johnson / Cordis company which has licensed ABPS technology.