Jul 5, 2018 By Jacob Calvin Meyer staff Writer jmeyer@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

Most college students experience at least some sleep loss during a semester as exams, homework assignments and extracurricular activities pile up.

Even more so, most medical students at Harvard probably don’t sleep the recommended eight hours a night.

For Bethel Park native Shantanu Gaur, his time at Harvard Medical School was even more stressful than it normally is, as Gaur launched his own weight-loss business in 2009 and ran it while in school.

“Medical school is tough enough on its own, and it eats into your sleep schedule,” he said. “Then when you get on top of trying to launch this business, we didn’t end up sleeping much.”

Gaur said for him and his partner, Samuel Levy, the outcome was worth it. Their company, Allurion, now has more than 50 employees, has treated more than 5,000 people in Europe and the Middle East, and its main product is currently in the clinical trials process to treat patients in the United States.

Gaur and Levy developed the Elipse Balloon, a non-invasive weight-loss device. For Gaur, all the hard work in college has paid off and should continue to, considering by 2030, it’s projected about half of the world’s population will be overweight.

“When you’re young, you’re working on something that has the potential to save the world,” he said. “We’re working on something that could affect 50 percent of the human beings on this planet. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

What attracted Gaur to the “obesity epidemic,” he said, was the pace at which it is growing. Today, about 2 billion people in the world are overweight, with 70 million Americans categorized as obese.

“They are just stunning numbers that obesity and weight-related issues are really the greatest epidemic of our times, and it impacts every facet of the healthcare system,” he said.

Gaur and Levy said they believed consumers wanted a new type of weight-loss product, compared to the typical weight-loss program or procedure, which can vary in success, be expensive and potentially dangerous.

The Elipse Balloon, which costs about $3,000-4,000, is something Gaur said “can be done on a lunch break.” The customer swallows a pill with a balloon inside attached to a thin tube. Once the pill reaches the stomach, the tube is connected to a bag of fluid and the balloon is filled. The customer then weighs in and logs into a smartphone app to track his or her progress.

Gaur said the average customer loses 25-30 pounds in the four months, after which the balloon releases the water and is passed by the person naturally.

Putting balloons in stomachs to lose weight isn’t a new concept, but doing it without a procedure is, Gaur said. The balloon acts as a meal that is always in the stomach, taking up approximately 30-50 percent of the volume of a completely full stomach. The point of the balloon, he said, is to teach the customer long-term portion control.

“Your stomach is never empty,” he said. “When you sit down to eat, after a few bites or half a slice of pizza, you start feeling full, and the balloon sends a signal up to your brain to slow down because you’re getting full. That’s the type of teaching you need to really incorporate portion control in your day to day lives.”

Gaur said side effects include nausea and cramping, most of which often happen if the customer overeats.

With the success of Allurion, which is based in Boston and launched the Elipse Balloon in 2016, Gaur is appreciative of his time as a student in Bethel Park.

“Growing up in Bethel and Pittsburgh more broadly taught me a couple of things,” he said. “It taught me to have grit. Pittsburgh is a city that isn’t afraid to roll up its sleeves, get its hands dirty and put in the time and work but also really value top-tier academics. I left Pittsburgh and Bethel knowing that you need to excel academically and intellectually to be successful, but you also have to have that grit. You need to roll up your sleeves and put in the work.”

Gaur still remains close with several former educators, including Nancy Aloi Rose and Gloria Feather from Independence Middle School. Rose was Gaur’s principal at Independence and later Bethel Park School District superintendent, and Feather was his language arts teacher.

“I was fortunate to have a lot of great mentors growing up,” he said. “Nancy was my principal at Independence Middle School and was really one of the first people to push me to think well beyond what we were studying in school and pursue extracurricular activities and get exposed to things outside of Bethel Park like competitions and research opportunities. Gloria instilled in me the skills of being brief and concise but also a great communicator.”

Gaur anticipates the Elipse Balloon to be on the market in the United States about 2020. One of the clinical trials is at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.