Truffle Capital leads investment to give artificial heart a flying start

Spin-out formed

An artificial heart device company, Carmat SAS, has been created with finance from Truffle Capital, the aerospace manufacturers EADS, the Fondation Alain Carpentier and the French state innovation agency OSEO

The company has been spun out of the collaboration between the surgeon Professor Alan Carpentier and EADS that has been investigating the use of biomaterials and other technologies in the construction of an artificial heart. Carmat intends to bring a fully implantable artificial heart to market 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 Carmat has raised over €7 million, with €5 million from Truffle Capital and €2.25 million from EADS and the Fondation Alain Carpentier.

In addition, OSEO has awarded Carmat €33 million in grants-in-aid and loans – the largest amount of funding the innovation agency has ever awarded to a start-up.

The preliminary animal trials and lab tests performed with the Carmat’s artificial heart have generated interest from the medical community in France and worldwide. The prototype has been patented and is now undergoing preclinical testing.

The biocompatible device 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.

"We are delighted to be contributing to the launch of Carmat,” said Jean-Claude Cadudal, Chairman of the new company and former International Vice President of EADS. “We want Carmat to become a global leader in a sector that is seeking to resolve a major public health problem – heart failure.”

“We are proud to be the lead investor in this exceptional medical and technological project, which should result in the most advanced artificial heart in the world. It up opens the field for autonomous, self-regulating, complex bioprostheses - a very broad area in the interventional medicine of the future. This is a fine example of entrepreneurial capitalism, the key to economic growth and social progress,” commented Philippe Pouletty, CEO of Truffle Capital.

“The creation of a French company capable of industrialising a very innovative artificial heart is the result of fifteen years of work from our group,” said Carpentier, the project’s scientific founder.

“At present, we have a prototype which is potentially implantable in humans and whose components have already been evaluated on the test bed over the equivalent of several years’ operation. Once we have approval from the AFSSAPS, [the French Health Products Regulator] we hope to start clinical trials within the next two to three years - first in France and then abroad.”

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.

A member of the French Academy of Science and a winner of the 1998 Foundation for Medical Research Prize, he also received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2007 in recognition of his two main contributions to the field, the 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.