Launch And Funding Of Carmat SAS, An Innovative Start-Up Developing An Artificial Heart

Main Category: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Also Included In: Cardiovascular / Cardiology;  Heart Disease
Article Date: 27 Oct 2008 - 11:00 PDT

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CARMAT SAS is an innovative medtech start-up that has just been created and financed by TRUFFLE CAPITAL , EADS and the Fondation Alain Carpentier, with additional funding from the French state innovation agency OSEO. The company has been spun out of the collaboration between the renowned surgeon Professor Carpentier and EADS on implementation of biomaterials and cutting-edge technologies in the construction of an artificial heart. CARMAT intends to market a fully implantable artificial heart that will be able to provide renewed hope and quality of life to the hundreds of thousands of patients suffering in the aftermath of a massive heart attack or with late-stage heart failure and for whom standard drug therapy, ventricular assistance and/or a heart transplant have failed or are not possible.

In this first round of financing (with TRUFFLE CAPITAL as lead investor), CARMAT SAS has raised over €7 million (with €5 million from TRUFFLE CAPITAL and €2.25 million from EADS and the Fondation Alain Carpentier). Depending on CARMAT's progress and needs, the company will seek additional international equity investments in the years to come. OSEO has just awarded CARMAT €33 million in grants-in-aid and loans - the largest amount of funding ever awarded to a start-up by OSEO.

The preliminary animal trials and lab tests performed with the CARMAT artificial heart have generated interest from the medical community in France and worldwide, as well as from the health authorities. The dynamism and exceptional skills of the team of physicians and engineers that has formed around Professor Carpentier and his colleagues at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris convinced first TRUFFLE CAPITAL and then OSEO to actively fund the CARMAT project. At present, CARMAT's prototype artificial heart has been patented and is undergoing preclinical testing. It meets the human body's biocompatibility criteria. It is functionally similar to the human heart in both anatomic and functional terms - notably via automatic regulation of heart rate and blood flow according to the patient's physiological needs. Following approval by the French Agency for Healthcare Product Safety (AFSSAPS), CARMAT's prototype will be evaluated first in life-threatened patients with no other available treatment options and then (depending on the results of the initial clinical trials) in patients with a better prognosis.

CARMAT SAS has attracted a highly talented team of a dozen engineers, researchers and technicians, managed by Patrick Coulombier and his assistant Marc Grimme. The company expects to recruit additional management team members in the months to come. The start-up will be based in the Paris region and will work with a network of (mostly French) subcontractors.

About Professor Alain Carpentier

Alain Carpentier is Emeritus Professor at the Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris, where he founded and manages the Heart Transplant and Prostheses Laboratory. He is also a Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. As a member of the French Academy of Science and a winner of the 1998 Foundation for Medical Research Prize, he also received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2007 in recognition of his two main contributions to the field - invention of the first valve bioprostheses (Carpentier-Edwards valves) and the development of techniques for plastic and reconstructive surgery of heart valves, which benefit several hundred thousand patients worldwide each year.

About TRUFFLE CAPITAL
About EADS
About OSEO

Source
Caroline Carmagnol
http://www.alizerp.com

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