Abbott Laboratories scored a major win for its Mitraclip device thanks to data from the COAPT study for secondary mitral valve regurgitation. The latest data from this study show a stunning difference in two-year mortality compared to maximized medical management only – 29% on the device versus 46% on medical management – but differences between the COAPT study results and outcomes seen in the MITRA-FR study will force cardiologists to dive into the data to ensure that their patient selection practices account for critical differences in the conduct of these two studies.
The fundraising environment for startups in med tech is expected to continue to be challenging for at least another year as public markets remain closed and private investors favor companies that have already de-risked their products. One of the major issues in the U.K. and Europe is that the IPO markets are “pretty much shut” and “our public markets aren’t working”, therefore companies are having to rely on private funding, with venture capital being one of those sources, said Robert Tansley, partner, at venture capital fund Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC).
As companies increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) in medical devices and applications to help treat and diagnose patients, innovators must be careful of excluding large sections of the population in their algorithms and in their data gathering process, delegates heard at the Medtech Futures conference in Cambridge, U.K.
Surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) devices are widely believed to be considerably more durable than transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) devices, but five-year data for Medtronic plc’s Corevalve Evolut, presented this week at the Cardiovascular Research Technologies Conference in Washington, seem to suggest that TAVR devices are closing that gap.
While still pending clearance in the U.S., Medtronic plc’s Minimed 780G advanced hybrid closed loop (AHCL) system continues to post strong results in clinical trials. Results of two studies presented at the 2023 Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes Conference in Berlin on Feb. 27 demonstrated that patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) who used the device for one year maintained a 26.7% increase in time in range for adults and a 14% increase in time in range for children aged 7 to 17 compared to their baseline using multiple daily injections with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).
Anthony Fauci has retired from his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and as chief medical advisor to the U.S. president. But Fauci, who has advised every president since Ronald Reagan, continues to share his encyclopedic knowledge with the HIV research community, as he has since the beginning of the HIV pandemic. Fauci co-founded the first National Conference on Human Retroviruses and related infections in 1993. At the Opening Session of the 30th edition of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), he highlighted the advances that have collectively extended the life expectancy of newly diagnosed patients by decades.
To restore hearing function in patients with hearing loss or deafness, cochlear implantation is seen as the only method that works, but insertion of the electrode array may cause direct mechanical injury to the cochlea, with the subsequent loss attributed to an inflammatory response driven by proinflammatory cytokines, reactive oxygen species and apoptotic signals.
GSR Ventures, a venture firm focused on early stage digital health companies, forecasts a much brighter investment picture for 2023 following a hard reset in 2022, said GSR Partner Sunny Kumar in an interview with BioWorld at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
Dexcom Inc. appears poised for a very strong year with multiple new products, including the long-awaited G7, having recently received regulatory green lights in the U.S. and Europe. In addition, recommendations to expand coverage of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) for individuals with type 2 diabetes promise to open the market to millions of new patients. Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer provided new details and updated guidance at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francsico earlier this week and the company released preliminary results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2022.
Stimulating the brain via implanted electrodes is used to treat both movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and some psychiatric conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. But researchers are also working on ways to make such implanted electrodes listen instead of talk – and translate neuronal signals for people that have lost the ability speak, or the ability to move.