cardiovascular
(13)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.