Caranx Medical announces successful world first robotic assisted transcatheter heart valve implantation in an animal
16 April 2024 - 6:30PM
Business Wire
Caranx Medical (‘Caranx’), a French medical device company
specializing in the development of autonomous robot to democratize
access to Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), a
lifesaving procedure, today announced the successful world first
robotic assisted heart valve (aortic valve) implantation in an
animal.
The assisted heart valve implantation in the animal was
successfully performed by Dr. Stéphane Lopez, Caranx CMO Dr. Eric
Sejor, Caranx CTO Pierre Berthet-Rayne and Caranx team.
“This groundbreaking achievement is the result of hard teamwork.
At Caranx Medical, we are dedicated to improving patients' lives
through true innovation. This successful transcatheter robotic
aortic valve implantation marks the first step toward a new
generation of intelligent robots guided by AI, set to transform
healthcare as we know it” says Pierre Berthet-Rayne, PhD,
co-founder and CTO of Caranx.
“This major medical first lies not only in the technical
achievement of Caranx Medical's engineers, but also in the impact
that this technology will have on interventional cardiology
practice. By simplifying and standardizing a complex procedure, the
robot we have developed opens up new possibilities for improving
the performance and safety of TAVI procedures” says Dr. Eric
Sejor, co-founder and CMO of Caranx.
The TAVI procedure was introduced app. 20 years ago, and still
critical challenges and long learning curves are faced by
cardiologists during these procedures in a precise and accurate
delivery of the heart valve. This is resulting in only 300.000 TAVI
procedures being conducted annually in the USA and EU, despite over
1.700.000 eligible patients and the difficulty of the procedure
still triggers some drawbacks like frequent need for post procedure
pacemakers, due to a lack of precision in the delivery of the
implant.
"It is with logic that we prove, and with intuition that we
find". “This quote from Henri Poincaré perfectly sums up the work
of the Caranx team, who had the intuition, that robotics combined
with artificial intelligence and imaging could improve the results
of prosthetic heart valve implantation. During this first robotic
implantation on a porcine model, the sensations were very similar
to those observed during a conventional procedure on our patients.
There is no doubt that the use of robotics coupled with artificial
intelligence and imaging will improve the safety, precision and
reproducibility of the procedure in humans” says Dr. Stéphane
Lopez, Institut Arnault Tzanck, Saint Laurent du var, France,
who performs more than 400 TAVI procedures per year.
“The team at Caranx, has achieved an important milestone as it
successfully deployed a balloon-expandable device in the aortic
position, in a pig model. This extremely promising step paves the
way to a first-in-human utilization. I am very excited about
robotic-assisted TAVI/TAVR, a key to the harmonization of practices
as well as the promotion of more predictable and controlled valve
deployment. Our patients will undoubtedly benefit from this
breakthrough technology in the future” says Dr. Didier Tchétché,
Clinique Pasteur, Toulouse, France, who performs more than
1.000 TAVI procedures per year.
According to Frost and Sullivan, the TAVI market is an $8Bn
market growing double digits annually.
“With Caranx impressive technology and team, interventional
cardiology and physicians can hope for what aircrafts and pilots
have been benefiting from for decades: reliable automation,
supervised by pilots, imaging and AI for medicine mimicking
satellite/GPS systems for flying” says Dr. Philippe
Pouletty, co-founder of Caranx and CEO of Truffle Capital.
The Caranx Medical robotic solution, TAVI-PILOT, is a simple,
easy-to-use robotic solution, which promises precise, accurate and
autonomous valve positioning and delivery. TAVI-PILOT is a
revolution for the replacement of the aortic valve, which is
restricted because it is reserved for the most experienced
cardiologists. Like soft tissue robots have multiplied the number
of urologists comfortable to execute a mini-invasive surgical
removal of the prostate, TAVI-PILOT will multiply the number of
interventional cardiologists to perform safely this life saving
procedure.
“This is a major achievement by the Caranx team in the past
months. However, at Caranx Medical, we're not just stopping at
Aortic valve replacement. Our vision extends to developing our
Artificial Intelligence Platform, currently containing more than
5000 of annotated multimodality images of CT, Fluoroscopy, Echo,
reports, etc. used to feed our AI algorithms and to revolutionize
other endovascular indications, such as mitral and tricuspid valve
replacements or even other endoluminal procedures, reshaping the
landscape of interventional medicine” says CEO of Caranx, Jorgen
Hansen.
About Caranx Medical
Backed by a team of top-tier experts, management team and
supported by Truffle Capital, a renowned name in European biotech
and MedTech investment, Caranx Medical is a French MedTech company,
founded by CMO Dr. Eric Sejor, CTO Pierre Berthet-Rayne, PhD. and
Dr. Philippe Pouletty and Truffle Capital, with the ambition to
become a global leader in robotic assisted transcatheter heart
valve implantation.
Caranx Medical develops the TAVI PILOT, a simple, easy-to-use
robotic solution, which promises precise, accurate and autonomous
valve positioning and delivery. Caranx Medical’s strategy includes
bringing to market TAVI PILOT Soft, an AI intra-operative GPS
software which tracks real-time anatomical and instrument landmarks
on fluoroscopic images and TAVI PILOT Robotic solution to First in
Human in 2025.
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