TherOx Inc. is a medical device company based in Irvine. TherOx's technology dissolves supersaturated levels of oxygen in saline to create Aqueous Oxygen, or AO solution, which is infused into the blood stream to help restore oxygen to oxygen-deprived tissue. For example, AO Therapy administered within hours after a heart attack may resuscitate damaged heart muscle that would otherwise die. AO Therapy can be administered in the cardiac cath lab immediately following standard interventional procedures (angioplasty and stents). TherOx believes its technology represents a Platform Technology that can be applied to a variety of medical conditions. The first application to be evaluated is AMI, which affects over 1.3 million patients annually in the U.S. alone.