In the early 1990s, St. Jude Medical was the market leader in its sole product area: mechanical heart valves, which placed it among the most profitable of device companies. Demographics, however, limited heart valves' future growth opportunities and St. Jude needed to diversify, moving into cardiac rhythm management (CRM), cardiology catheters, and vascular access devices, while also expanding in cardiac surgery. The diversification process went anything but smoothly, the company missed its numbers, and investors were quick to punish St. Jude for its integration missteps. In the past year, however, the company has become one of Wall Street's few device darlings, ranking number one in 2000 for returns among device stocks. The company's growth is largely the result of sticking to a strategy that has St. Jude well-positioned in CRM's traditional markets, while also poised to pursue huge new opportunities in atrial fibrillation and, to a lesser degree, congestive heart failure. And St. Jude has not forgotten its base: cardiac surgery, where the company has introduced new sutureless anastomotic technology for minimally invasive coronary bypass surgery.
by Stephen Levin
In the early 1990s, St. Paul, MN-based St. Jude Medical Inc. was in its heyday. The company's business was...
Join thousands of industry professionals who rely on In Vivo for daily insights
Already a subscriber?
Despite limited evidence of commercial impact, pharmaceutical companies are making massive strategic investments in AI biologics platforms. The question isn't whether the technology shows promise; it's whether that promise can translate to measurable business results.
Against a backdrop of shifting trade policies, the end of multilateral market approaches and renewed focus on supply chain resilience, medtechs are doubling down on innovation in products and processes – using AI – and keeping unmet needs and outcomes in the center of the target.
While biopharma companies experiment with genAI, agentic AI is rapidly shifting the work paradigm towards one of autonomous digital workers that can handle entire process flows.
Biotech companies are pursuing diverse AI strategies beyond expensive custom data generation: foundation model fine-tuning, data-efficient computational methods and targeted proprietary datasets. In Vivo takes a look at some examples.
In Vivo sits down with Ying Tam, CSO at Acuitas Therapeutics, to discuss the company's role in delivering the first personalized CRISPR treatment to an infant and the clinical implications of new lipid nanoparticle technologies.
When it came to AI-related deals, the second quarter of 2025 was characterized by mostly modest financings.
The big pharma CEO with the highest-valued compensation in 2024 was David Ricks of Eli Lilly, while Pfizer and J&J executives slipped into third and fourth place behind AbbVie's now retired chief Richard Gonzalez. European firms brought up the rear.
