Caranx Medical (‘Caranx’), a French medical device company developing an autonomous robot for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), has announced the successful 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.
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.
“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.
“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 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.
