cardiovascular
(29)
Stacie Arechavala
Stacie Arechavala is a biomedical engineer and the cofounder and CEO of Selera Medical (YC W24), a San Francisco medical device startup she started in 2023 with Kevin Bui after the two met as fellows at Stanford Biodesign. She trained at the University of Miami and Duke, developed cardiovascular devices at Medtronic, and built low-cost devices for underserved communities before turning her attention to heart failure care. Her guiding line: innovation can change the world, but design is what makes it happen.
Selera Medical
Selera Medical is a Y Combinator-backed (W24) medical device startup building MILO - minimally invasive lymphatic offloading - a one-time, catheter-based procedure that treats fluid overload in chronic heart failure. Instead of a lifelong drug regimen, Selera taps the body's lymphatic system to drain trapped fluid from the interstitial space, aiming to break the cycle of repeat hospitalizations that defines late-stage heart failure. Founded in 2023 by CEO Stacie Arechavala and CTO Kevin Bui, both former Stanford Biodesign fellows.
Spectrumedics Medical
Spectrumedics Medical is a Singapore-based medical device company building active, minimally-invasive cardiovascular interventional systems. Its flagship product, the Sonico-CX intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) system, uses acoustic pressure waves to break up calcified coronary lesions so cardiologists can restore blood flow and place stents. In January 2026 the company earned an EU CE mark, joining Johnson & Johnson MedTech's Shockwave and Elixir Medical as one of the few companies with EU-approved coronary IVL systems. Backed by a Series A round led by Legend Capital, Spectrumedics operates from the JTC MedTech Hub and is commercializing across Asia Pacific and Latin America while expanding into Europe and the Middle East.
Angio8
Angio8 (Shenzhen Tonglu Technology, 通甪科技) is a medical robotics company building a surgical robot and treatment platform for minimally invasive vascular interventional procedures. Its system lets physicians remotely manipulate catheters and guidewires with force feedback, aiming to make interventional surgery safer, more precise, and less reliant on repeated radiation exposure for the operating team. Founded in 2021 and based in Shenzhen's Bao'an District, the company is led by co-founder and CEO Yunfei (Richard) Cao and is backed by investors including Oriental Fortune Capital, Kangyu Capital and Ruiqian Capital.
Axon Therapies, Inc.
Axon Therapies is a clinical-stage medical device company developing SAVM (Splanchnic Ablation for Volume Management), a minimally invasive, implant-free catheter procedure that ablates the greater splanchnic nerve to calm an overactive sympathetic nervous system and rebalance blood volume in patients with heart failure - particularly heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Incubated by the medtech studio Coridea and backed by leading healthcare investors, the company is advancing its Satera Ablation System through randomized, sham-controlled feasibility trials.
Howard Rosen
Howard Rosen is the CEO and co-founder of Evident Vascular, a San Jose medtech startup building an AI-powered intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) platform for peripheral and coronary interventions. A 30-year cardiovascular device veteran, he spent 21 years at Boston Scientific before helping guide Intact Vascular and its spinout Vesper Medical through acquisitions by Philips. He launched Evident out of stealth in 2023 with a $35 million Series A led by Vensana Capital and closed a Series B in 2025. He is known for a disciplined 'go slow to go fast' company-building philosophy.
James Reinstein
James Reinstein is the President and CEO of Conformal Medical, a New Hampshire medical device company building next-generation left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) technology to reduce stroke risk in patients with atrial fibrillation. A three-decade medtech operator, he spent 17 years at Boston Scientific in commercial leadership across Asia, Europe and Latin America before running a string of device companies as CEO, including Cutera, Drawbridge Health, Aptus Endosystems and Saranas. Known for insisting that a device company think commercially from day one, he took the helm at Conformal in 2022 to guide its foam-based CLAAS system through pivotal trials toward market.
Elixir Medical Corporation
Elixir Medical Corporation is a privately held Milpitas, California medical device company building implantable technologies to treat coronary and peripheral artery disease. Its flagship DynamX Coronary Bioadaptor is a metal implant with a resorbable polymer coating that dissolves over roughly six months, 'uncaging' the artery so the vessel can pulse and move naturally rather than remaining permanently rigid like a conventional stent. Founded in 2005 by Motasim Sirhan, Elixir has produced a lineage of coronary devices - the DESolve bioresorbable scaffold, the DESyne family of drug-eluting stents, the LithiX intravascular lithotripsy system, and the DynamX bioadaptor - and has reported two consecutive randomized trials showing reduced long-term cardiac event rates versus current drug-eluting stents.
Fogarty Innovation
Fogarty Innovation is a nonprofit medtech incubator and education organization on the El Camino Health campus in Mountain View, California. Founded in 2007 by legendary surgeon-inventor Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, it helps early-stage medical device companies cross the gap from novel idea to clinical reality through hands-on coaching, education programs, and a network of 300+ industry experts. In October 2025 it merged with New York's Cardiovascular Research Foundation to become CRF's West Coast innovation hub.
Inquis Medical, Inc.
Inquis Medical is a Silicon Valley medical device company founded in 2020 by serial medtech entrepreneurs Vahid and Mojgan Saadat. Its flagship AVENTUS Precision Thrombectomy System removes blood clots from patients with pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT), using proprietary TrueClot tissue-sensing technology that gives physicians real-time feedback to distinguish blood, clot, and vessel wall while minimizing blood loss through autologous blood reinfusion. Backed by $115M in total funding including a $75M Series C in January 2026, the company is scaling nationwide commercial adoption after winning FDA 510(k) clearance for PE in 2025.
Shifamed
Shifamed is a Silicon Valley medical technology incubator founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Amr Salahieh. It combines human-centered design, in-house engineering, and R&D facilities to build medical device companies from concept to commercial launch, spinning out and incubating startups across cardiovascular, electrophysiology, and ophthalmology. Its portfolio and legacy companies have raised over $800M and produced multiple acquisitions by Boston Scientific, Abbott, Covidien, and Johnson & Johnson.
Supira Medical
Supira Medical is a clinical-stage cardiovascular device company in Los Gatos, California, building a next-generation percutaneous ventricular assist device (pVAD). Incubated inside Amr Salahieh's Shifamed innovation hub and led by CEO Nitin Salunke, the Supira System is a low-profile (10F), high-flow heart pump designed to give the heart temporary circulatory support during high-risk coronary interventions and cardiogenic shock, with the goal of moving more blood through a smaller sheath than the incumbent devices. The company raised a $120M oversubscribed Series E in March 2025 and won FDA approval to begin its SUPPORT II pivotal trial in 2026.
Yunfei Cao
Yunfei 'Richard' Cao is the co-founder and CEO of Angio8 (通甪科技), a Shenzhen-based startup building a next-generation surgical robot for minimally invasive vascular interventional surgery. A Stony Brook biomedical engineer who cut his teeth inside the Boston medical-device machine at Vention Medical, SunMed and China Med Device, Cao now runs a cross-Pacific company - engineering brains in Boston, manufacturing and clinical work in Shenzhen - aimed at letting doctors steer catheters and guidewires by robot instead of by hand.
Zoar Engelman
Zoar Engelman is the co-founder and CEO of Axon Therapies, a clinical-stage medical device company chasing a stubborn problem: heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a condition that has resisted nearly every drug thrown at it. A biomedical engineer with a PhD from the University of Auckland, Engelman spent two decades turning lab ideas into implantable and catheter-based devices, co-founding roughly nine ventures and helping raise more than $150 million along the way. In September 2025 he stepped up from Chief Scientific Officer to CEO as Axon closed an oversubscribed $32 million Series A to advance SAVM, an implant-free procedure that quiets an overactive sympathetic nervous system to rebalance the body's blood volume.
Adona Medical
Adona Medical is a clinical-stage medical device company in Los Gatos, California developing the Delphi System, a chronically adjustable interatrial shunt with integrated bi-atrial pressure monitoring designed to personalize heart failure therapy over time. A Shifamed portfolio company founded in 2019 by Brian Fahey, Amr Salahieh, and Lewis Schwartz, Adona uses shape memory nitinol and an external induction catheter to resize the shunt after implantation without further invasive procedures.
Auxilius Pharma
Auxilius Pharma is a clinical-stage cardiovascular pharmaceutical company developing AUX-001, a once-daily extended-release formulation of nicorandil for the roughly 11 million Americans living with chronic stable angina. By reformulating an established molecule through the FDA's 505(b)(2) pathway, the company aims to deliver what would be the first new innovative oral angina therapy in the US since 2006 - improving adherence, tolerability and outcomes for patients who still suffer symptoms despite optimal treatment.
Basking Biosciences, Inc.
Basking Biosciences is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing the first reversible thrombolytic therapy for acute ischemic stroke. Its lead candidate, BB-031, is a first-in-class RNA aptamer that inhibits von Willebrand Factor to break up clots quickly, paired with a companion reversal agent, BB-025, that can switch the drug's activity off in minutes if bleeding occurs. Spun out of research begun at Duke University and founded in 2019, the company is based in the Research Triangle of North Carolina and is advancing BB-031 through a Phase 2 RAISE trial.
DeLorean Artificial Intelligence
DeLorean Artificial Intelligence is a Palm Beach, Florida-based healthcare AI company that builds predictive and interventive intelligence to forecast chronic disease and recommend next-best clinical actions before a patient gets sicker. Its flagship Medical AI platform, MARTI, analyzes structured and unstructured health records to predict events like hospitalizations and disease progression - and is described as the first medical AI to be biologically validated by independent third parties. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Severence MacLaughlin, the company also applies its predictive engine to sales/CRM, life sciences, financial services and other industries.
Intravascular Imaging Incorporated (i3)
Intravascular Imaging Incorporated (i3) is a Wilton, Connecticut medical device company building a next-generation coronary imaging catheter. Its 3-French NIRF-IVUS catheter fuses intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), the clinical standard for guiding stent placement, with near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) molecular imaging in a single device. The combination lets cardiologists see not just the anatomy of a coronary artery but the biology inside it - plaque inflammation, arterial dissections, transplant vasculopathy, and fibrin in unhealed stents. Spun out of work at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and the Technical University of Munich, i3 aims to upgrade percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by helping doctors look beyond anatomy.
Salubris Biotherapeutics
Salubris Biotherapeutics (SalubrisBio) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in Gaithersburg, Maryland that engineers complex biologics for diseases with few good options - chiefly heart failure and cancer. Founded in 2016 as the US arm of China's Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals, its lead candidate JK07 is an antibody-fusion protein designed to harness the regenerative NRG-1/ErbB4 pathway in failing hearts while dialing out the side effects, and its oncology programs JK08 and JK06 pursue solid tumors through immune engagement and a 5T4-targeted biparatopic antibody-drug conjugate.
Eric Fain
Eric S. Fain, M.D. is the President and CEO of Procyrion, the Houston medical device company building Aortix, a percutaneous micropump roughly the size of a AA battery that is threaded into the aorta to boost blood flow and unload failing hearts. A Stanford-trained physician who never practiced clinically, Fain spent a decade at defibrillator pioneer Ventritex, then two decades climbing to Group President of St. Jude Medical and SVP at Abbott, before returning to startup life in 2018. He closed a $57.7M Series E in 2024 and serves as Lead Independent Director of Orchestra BioMed.
Jedrzej Litwiniuk
Jedrzej (Jed) Litwiniuk is the co-founder and CEO of Auxilius Pharma, a Boston- and New York-based pharmaceutical company built on the idea that the next breakthrough heart drug might already exist - it just needs to be reformulated. A corporate-finance and investment hand who crossed from PZU and LUX MED deal tables into the lab, he is steering AUX-001, a once-daily reformulation of nicorandil aimed at becoming the first new oral therapy for chronic stable angina in the US since 2006. In December 2025 the company closed a $4 million Series A to push the candidate through pharmaceutical optimization and a Phase Ib trial.
Samuel Murphy
Samuel Murphy is co-founder and CEO of Salubris Biotherapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech in Gaithersburg, Maryland developing complex biologics for cardiovascular, oncology, and neurodegenerative disease. A Penn-trained virologist who did his postdoc in the lab that became Spark Therapeutics, he spent a decade in pharma strategy consulting and life-sciences investment banking before joining Salubris in 2017 and taking the CEO seat in 2020. His lead program, JK07, is the first clinical-stage selective ErbB4 agonist aimed at being a disease-modifying biologic for heart failure. He also runs international business development for the company's Chinese parent, Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals.
William Hendren
William G. Hendren, MD, MBA is the co-founder and CEO of QURA, Inc., a Duxbury, Massachusetts medical technology company building the QSmart platform - an implantable biosensor roughly the size of a grain of rice that continuously measures and wirelessly transmits medical-grade blood pressure data in real time. A surgeon trained at Harvard, Mass General, Emory and the Cleveland Clinic, with an MBA and strategic healthcare consulting experience at PwC across the US, Middle East, China and the UK, Hendren is taking aim at hypertension, which he calls the single leading healthcare threat in the world.
Kardigan
Kardigan is a South San Francisco heart health company modernizing cardiovascular drug development. Founded by the team behind MyoKardia, it pairs a late-stage clinical pipeline in dilated cardiomyopathy, acute severe hypertension and calcific aortic valve stenosis with a 'cardiac intelligence' platform - real-world patient data and AI - to match disease drivers to the right responders.
Brian Fahey
Brian Fahey is a serial medtech entrepreneur who co-founded Adona Medical, a clinical-stage company developing an adjustable interatrial shunt with integrated bi-atrial pressure sensors for heart failure management. A Duke-trained biomedical engineer and Stanford Biodesign alumnus, Fahey previously co-founded Niveus Medical, which delivered over 10,000 ICU rehabilitation treatments before being acquired by Stryker in 2017. At Adona, he guided the company through $95.5M in total funding including a $33.5M Series C in 2024, and oversaw the initiation of first-in-human clinical trials before stepping down as CEO in December 2025.
Josh Lehrer
Josh Lehrer is a physician-scientist and biotech executive serving as CEO of Marea Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company harnessing human genetics to develop first-in-class medicines for cardiometabolic diseases. A cardiologist by training with degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and UCSF, Lehrer brings over two decades of drug development experience spanning Genentech, Global Blood Therapeutics (where he oversaw the FDA approval of Oxbryta for sickle cell disease), and Graphite Bio. At Marea, he has led the company from a Third Rock Ventures incubation to a $190 million-funded enterprise with two clinical-stage programs showing strong early efficacy data, including a 53% reduction in remnant cholesterol with MAR001 published in The Lancet.
Pavan Cheruvu
Dr. Pavan K. Cheruvu is the President and CEO of Bitterroot Bio, a Palo Alto-based biotech pioneering the field of cardio-immunology — the intersection of the immune system and cardiovascular disease. A Rhodes Scholar, board-certified cardiologist, and physician-scientist who trained at Duke, Oxford, Harvard/MIT, Johns Hopkins, and UCSF, Cheruvu is guiding Bitterroot Bio's lead program BRB-002 — a first-in-class CD47-targeting therapy for atherosclerosis — through clinical development after a landmark $145M Series A in 2023 and positive Phase 1 results in 2025.
Tassos Gianakakos
Tassos Gianakakos is a Greek-American biotech entrepreneur and the co-founder, CEO, and Chair of Kardigan, a cardiovascular drug discovery company he built from the ashes of MyoKardia — the precision-medicine heart company he led to a $13.1 billion acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2020. At Kardigan, he is applying the same playbook: marrying real-world clinical data, AI tools, and deep cardiovascular biology to deliver personalized medicines for heart disease — a field he believes is where oncology was 20 years ago. With $554 million raised and three late-stage clinical programs underway, Gianakakos is on a mission to make cardiovascular disease preventable and curable.