CircuLite: Treating Heart Failure’s Lost Patients

Article preview from IN VIVO - May, 2013

Even with all of the advances and options in heart failure therapy, there remain no real options for a large number of patients who are seriously ill but not yet at the end-stage of the disease. CircuLite hopes to change that with a partial support device for patients who don’t need a VAD.

CircuLite: Treating Heart Failure’s Lost Patients

Article preview from IN VIVO - May, 2013

Given the proliferation of medical devices over the past couple of decades, it’s easy to assume that there’s a technology solution for every disease and condition with any significant market size. Given the dozens if not hundreds of companies working on novel applications in everything from spine to heart valves, what untapped markets could possibly remain? Even a relatively new area, renal denervation, has, by some estimates, more than 60 technologies in development. Is there any serious condition that hasn’t yet attracted the attention of some device company and its investors?

Yes, say executives of New Jersey-based CircuLite Inc., makers of a novel implantable pump designed to treat a large group of seriously ill patients suffering from advanced but not yet end-stage heart failure. Representing what some call the “lost patients” of heart failure, these patients are unresponsive to drug or CRT therapy but not yet sick enough for ventricular assist devices (VADs), and they often find themselves no longer able to do simple, basic tasks, such as walk up stairs or sleep normally in their beds. For such patients, treatment must wait for a sad end-game, when they become eligible for the VAD therapy that most often begins a waiting game for a heart transplant unlikely to come.

Indeed, despite the many heart failure approaches that have been tried over the years – and the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in new HF treatments – this segment of the heart failure patient population has received little attention to date. CircuLite officials, however, believe they’ve got a solution for these patients: a partial support device that targets patients before full support is needed. Related to and sometimes confused for a VAD, CircuLite’s device is, say company officials, something altogether different: a heart failure support device that, if successful, could keep many patients from ever needing a VAD in the first place.

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