LuMend's Breakthrough Break Out

For many device companies and their investors, drug-eluting stents have come to represent a kind of technological end-game, a device so successful at solving an important unmet need that all future opportunities lie elsewhere. But, in fact, there are still many important unsolved problems in interventional cardiology, not the least of which is chronic total occlusions, lesions so thick and dense that blood can't flow through the artery. That's the problem LuMend has set out to solve and it has the first US-approved device on the market. And while some question the company's timing, LuMend officials argue they couldn't be better timed, since their device and drug-eluting stents go hand in hand.