Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair and Replacement

Edwards Life Sciences recently bought CardiAQ Valve Technologies, which is developing a novel mitral valve replacement product (shown). 

Transcatheter mitral valve repair or replacement (TMVR) could be the next multibillion-opportunity in medtech, and larger medtech companies are hitching their wagons to TMVR startups.

Abbott, which has an approved TMVR product, MitraClip, bought Tendyne Holdings and Cephea Valve Technologies in late July. Earlier that month, Edwards Lifesciences, which has an internal TMVR program, bought CardiAQ Valve Technologies, the only TMVR company to have implanted a mitral replacement valve using both the transfemoral and the transapical approaches. In August, Medtronic, also developing its own TMVR product, jumped into the fray and purchased Twelve. 

For all the money changing hands, TMVR products are extremely complex and it will be years before these products will make it to market.

[Image courtesy of EDWARDS LIFESCIENCES]

Learn how to design innovative structural heart therapies at the MD&M Minneapolis conference on September 21, 2016.