REHOVOT, Israel, Oct. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Pi-Cardia Ltd. (www.pi-cardia.net), announced today the appointment of Prof. Jacques Séguin, former CoreValve Founder and CEO and serial medical device entrepreneur, as Chairman of its Board of Directors.
Jacques Séguin is a professor of Cardiac Surgery at Paris University and holds, in addition to his MD, a PhD in Biochemistry and also in Medical History. After 20 years performing over 4,000 open-heart surgeries and being the author of more than 200 articles published in peer-reviewed international medical journals, he went on to found several medical technology companies: He was the driving force behind the creation of CoreValve and pioneered the self-expandable TAVR procedure, prior to its acquisition by Medtronic in February 2009 for over $800 million. The CoreValve revalving system was the first TAVR valve to gain CE Mark in May 2007. Jacques also founded ReCor – a renal denervation company acquired by Otsuka (Japan) in 2018. Prof. Séguin now serves as board member of 5 innovative companies in the Medtech space.
Pi-Cardia is a global leader in the development of unique non-implant based solutions for treating valve calcification. Pi-Cardia’s lead product, the Leaflex™ catheter, is easily delivered and positioned on the valve, to then mechanically score the calcification at multiple locations, restoring leaflets flexibility and improving valve hemodynamics. The Leaflex™ catheter is aimed to be a cost-effective, durable standalone treatment in patients who are not planned to undergo TAVR, a means to defer TAVR in patients who may be too young for TAVR, and a preparatory step to improve the outcome of TAVR in heavily calcified and bicuspid aortic valves.
Pi-Cardia successfully completed its First-in-Human (FIH) studies, demonstrating safety, feasibility and an acute hemodynamic improvement that was significantly better than previously shown for BAV. Study results were presented in May 2019 at the Late Breaking Trials Session at EuroPCR meeting in Paris. As a next step, the company plans to demonstrate the therapeutic effect of aortic valve scoring over time, by performing parallel clinical trials in the US and EU.
“I am honoured,” said Jacques Séguin, “to be joining Pi-Cardia’s board of directors at a pivotal time in the company’s history. The aortic valve market is expected to reach $8 billion in a few years, and there is an ever growing number of patients that need to be treated. In many of these patients we would prefer not to replace the valve if we had a safe and effective way to defer disease progression. I believe Pi-Cardia brings a unique approach that for the first time may achieve this goal. I look forward to interacting with the team and the many physicians involved in this fascinating breakthrough technology.”
“We are honored and excited to have Prof. Séguin join us as both an investor and Chairman of the Board. Similarly to when he became one of the founding fathers of TAVR, he is again one of the first to identify the growing opportunities for non-implant based approaches. We are delighted to work closely with Jacques on making Pi-Cardia the next revolution in structural heart.”
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