At least 26 million people worldwide suffer from heart failure and the number is growing, According to research. This is a devastating diagnosis – as the name suggests, the damaged organ is no longer functioning properly and cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. Progressive disease is incurable and can quickly become fatal.
“About 50 percent of patients die within five years. It’s really worse than (most forms of) cancer,” Stuart Plant said. Cyrex Medical.
But the Cardiff, UK-based health tech startup has an ambitious goal to change that.
Cyrex announced Wednesday It raised £3.8 million, or the equivalent of nearly $4.8 million, to commercialize and fund the first-in-human trial of a technology the company and its investors believe could save the lives of heart failure patients. Icehouse Ventures, Welsh Development Bank, Parkwalk Advisors, Business Growth Fund and a consortium of angel investors provided funding.
Ceryx’s device, the Cysoni, is designed to regulate the rhythm of the heart according to a person’s breathing rhythm, thereby synchronizing heart rate and breathing. This is often the case in healthy people, but in people with heart failure, the link is severed, Plante said.
“If we can restore the heart-lung connection in heart failure patients, we can make them better,” he said.
Preclinical studies of the technology in animal models, namely sheep with heart failure, found that the device not only restored heart function, increasing the amount of blood the organ was able to pump, but also repaired damaged heart cells. If Ceryx can replicate these findings in humans, it could eliminate the symptoms of heart failure and allow the heart to repair itself, Plant said.
“Basically, you might end up completely reversing the damage to the heart and curing heart failure,” Plante said. “It’s a pretty big request. But that’s what the early data suggests. “
Currently, there are no devices or treatments that can stop the progression of the heart associated with heart failure or reverse the damage to the heart. A traditional pacemaker acts like a metronome, keeping the heart at a certain beat-per-minute rate and can effectively address arrhythmias. But Plante believes that by going beyond the heart and synchronizing heart rate with breathing, Ceryx’s technology will be more effective at restoring function and repairing organ damage.
“It’s listening to the body’s movements and timing the heart to increase its efficiency and keep the heart working,” he stressed. “The big difference is that our hearts and lungs do this naturally.. “
Plant expects to start recruiting participants for human trials early next year, which will be conducted in the UK and New Zealand. Ceryx’s ultimate goal with Cysoni is to make it an implantable device, although it could also license the technology for use in pacemakers from another device maker.
To conduct research in humans, Ceryx will use an external pacemaker device and load it with the company’s technology. Plant explained that this will be used to pace the hearts of heart failure patients who have undergone coronary artery bypass surgery. This pacing is usually done within a few hours after bypass surgery. But Plante said in the trial that participants were paced throughout their time in the hospital to better understand what the technology could do.
That will determine whether the technology lives up to earlier promises.
“We are very impressed with the progress Ceryx Medical has made,” said Richard Thompson, senior investment director at the Welsh Development Bank. “The life-saving potential of Cysoni and related developments cannot be overstated, and we are eager to see how Ceryx’s technology performs.”
Photo: BrianAJackson, Getty Images
