Newly-Private MicroMed: Is it Destined for Greater Markets?
• By Mary Stuart
MicroMed has the smallest LVAD on the market (outside of the US), which makes it suitable for the sought-after destination therapy market. The MicroMed LVAD has been implanted in more then 450 patients, which makes it second only to Thoratec in terms of the number of implants. But it hasn't been easy. To get to this point, MicroMed chewed through large helpings of money-seed funding, four rounds of venture capital, and a bank financing, before going public in 2005 through a reverse merger with a shell company. By the end of 2007, MicroMed needed to raise money on top of a large accumulated deficit. Rescue came from private equity group E-Wilson, which took the company private.
When we first became acquainted with Houston’s MicroMed Cardiovascular Inc. (then known as MicroMed
Technology) in 1998, the start-up sought to bring left ventricular
assist devices (LVADs) into the Space Age, which was only natural
since it licensed its core technology from NASA. Famed heart
surgeons Michael DeBakey and George Noon provided the clinical
expertise in the development of the device. (See "The Bridge
Across Forever: Devices for CHF" START-UP, October 1998
Also see "The Bridge Across Forever: Devices for CHF" - Medtech Insight, 1 October, 1998..)
Back in 1998, ventricular assist devices were in their first decade of use as circulatory support systems to bridge patients...
After in-licensing a cardiovascular candidate last year, AstraZeneca has signed a strategic drug discovery alliance, which could generate billions of dollars in payments to the Chinese firm.
Recent moves in the industry include changes at the top at iOnctura
and Orca Bio, plus Sutro Biopharma, Tenpoint Therapeutics and Helix BioPharma get new CFOs.
