heart-failure
(8)
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.
J. Eduardo Rame
J. Eduardo Rame is a Philadelphia cardiologist who treats the sickest hearts in medicine - patients in the final stage of heart failure who depend on pumps, transplants and the chance their own muscle can be coaxed back to life. As the Louis R. Dinon MD Professor and enterprise chief of Advanced Cardiac and Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Jefferson Health, he runs an integrated division built around recovery rather than replacement. Yale-trained in biophysics, Oxford-trained in health economics and Harvard-trained in medicine, he spent a decade founding Penn's mechanical circulatory support program before bringing that work to Jefferson. His research on left ventricular assist devices, including the landmark MOMENTUM 3 trial, has been cited more than 12,000 times.
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.
Eric Meizlish
Eric Meizlish is the CEO of Cardiosense, a Chicago digital health company building AI-enabled, non-invasive cardiac monitoring. A Yale-trained investor turned healthcare operator, he co-founded the clinical analytics firm Lumere (sold to GHX), ran the life-sciences procurement platform Prendio-BioProcure, and started his career investing in tech and media at Citadel. He took the Cardiosense top job in September 2025 to scale the company's CardioTag sensor, which predicts pressures and volumes inside the heart without an implant.
Richard Law
Richard Law is the Chief Business Officer of HAYA Therapeutics, the Lausanne- and San Diego-based biotech decoding the 'dark genome' to build RNA-guided medicines that reprogram disease-driving cell states. A computational chemist turned dealmaker with a Oxford PhD in molecular biophysics and an Imperial MBA, he spent over a decade at Evotec, then steered Exscientia through its 2021 Nasdaq IPO, marquee pharma partnerships, and 2024 merger with Recursion before joining HAYA in March 2025 to drive its partnering strategy and growth.
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.
John McCutcheon
John McCutcheon is President, CEO, and Director of EBR Systems, Inc., the Sunnyvale-based medical device company behind the WiSE CRT system - the world's first FDA-approved leadless solution for left ventricular pacing. With over 40 years in medical device sales, marketing, and general management, McCutcheon has shepherded EBR through pivotal clinical trials, FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, and the landmark FDA approval in April 2025. Before EBR, he led Ceterix Orthopaedics to a $105 million acquisition by Smith & Nephew. He brings a track record of building and selling medical device companies, now steering EBR's commercial launch of a technology that could transform how heart failure patients receive cardiac resynchronization therapy.
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.