NovaPump’s PERKAT™ (PERku­tane KATheter­pumpe) short term MCS for acute patients achieved impor­tant mile­stones within the last months. With this financ­ing round it is pos­si­ble to develop the PERKAT™ prod­ucts fur­ther to the first-in-man (FIM) tri­als. The PERKAT RV device can be implanted to increase car­diac out­put (CO) of patients, who suf­fer from acute heart fail­ure due to pul­monary embolism or myocar­dial infarc­tion. Cur­rently, these patients have an extremely high mor­tal­ity rate. The MCS improves CO if drug treat­ment fails to sta­bi­lize the hemo­dy­namic con­di­tion in such cases. The PERKAT MCS from Nova­Pump employs a unique self-expand­ing mech­a­nism of the pump cham­ber. PERKAT is com­pletely catheter-based, ECG con­trolled, and com­bines phys­i­o­logic pul­satile mech­a­nism and an auto­mated pump mode. Prof Markus Fer­rari (MD), co-founder and inven­tor of PERKAT explained: “Our heart pumps can be implanted under X‑Ray con­trol within a few min­utes. They work in a pul­satile man­ner using ECG or pres­sure trig­ger to phys­i­o­log­i­cally sup­port the fail­ing human heart. Post CE approval, our devices will be a mean­ing­ful appli­ca­tion for cur­rent IABP (Intra Aor­tic Bal­loon Coun­ter­pul­sa­tion) tech­nol­ogy, which is avail­able for treat­ment in most heart cen­tres world­wide today. The PERKAT heart pumps can fur­ther increase our ther­a­peu­tic options with MCS in car­dio­genic shock patients.” Ronald Reich, founder and CEO added: “We are very pleased about the trust placed in us from our new investors (a global med-tech com­pany) and our seed investors HTGF and bm‑t. We will use these A‑round funds to fur­ther progress on our next mile­stones, includ­ing the planned clin­i­cal trial for our right heart pump and to advance our research col­lab­o­ra­tions with our R&D part­ners in the field of short-term mechan­i­cal cir­cu­la­tion sup­port.” Dr Mar­tin Pfis­ter, senior invest­ment man­ager from HTGF com­mented: “With this invest­ment round Nova­Pump has attained the nec­es­sary bud­get to develop the PERKAT heart pumps fur­ther to the first in man trial. We are pleased to be invest­ing as part of a strong con­sor­tium with a global med-tech part­ner who extends the capa­bil­i­ties of Nova­Pump with deep indus­try exper­tise in this field.” In Ger­many alone there are about 250.000 cases of myocar­dial infarc­tion annu­ally. Over the last two decades, since hav­ing mod­ern per­cu­ta­neous MCS avail­able, the mor­tal­ity rate after an acute myocar­dial infarc­tion could be decreased effec­tively due to this novel cut­ting-edge tech­nique. Today’s per­cu­ta­neous MCS could be implanted in the catheter lab via the leg ves­sels (Seldingers’ tech­nique) directly to the humans heart within an implan­ta­tion time of less than 15 min­utes. Self-expand­ing and espe­cially pul­satile catheter-based MCS like the PERKAT heart pumps will offer clin­i­cians a fur­ther phys­i­o­log­i­cally opti­mized ther­apy option and aim to save addi­tional mul­ti­ple thou­sands of lives annually.

The Jena-based car­di­ol­ogy start-up is devel­op­ing new kinds of mechan­i­cal sup­port sys­tems (MCS) for acute patients that are per­cu­ta­neous, self-expand­ing, and pul­satile. These MCS are intended for tem­po­rary use with a max­i­mum dura­tion of 14 days. The company´s orig­i­nal PERKAT RV right-heart pump was largely grant funded by the BMBF (Fed­eral Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research), and the BMBF is also now fund­ing the devel­op­ment of a next gen­er­a­tion left heart pump through a research net­work con­sor­tium. Nova­Pump was founded by a team of sci­en­tists, clin­i­cians and busi­ness econ­o­mists in Jena, Ger­many in 2012.

Erfurt-based, bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment Thürin­gen (bm|t) – a sub­sidiary of the Thürin­gen Devel­op­ment Bank, is the first address for invest­ments in Thürin­gen, Ger­many. bm‑t cur­rently man­ages eight invest­ment funds with a total vol­ume of 400M EUR. bm‑t invests in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies with strong growth poten­tial across all sec­tors and all phases of the cor­po­rate lifecycle.

The Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land is the largest regional finan­cial part­ner and has been rooted in the region since 1828. Invest­ments such as those in Nova­Pump are an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to eco­nomic devel­op­ment in the region. This is why Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land will con­tinue to sup­port fur­ther busi­ness start-ups in the future. The strong regional know-how is thus bun­dled through good net­work­ing and is intended to sup­port the dynamic start-up scene.

The seed investor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finances tech­nol­ogy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a vol­ume of approx­i­mately 900 mil­lion euros dis­trib­uted over three funds and an inter­na­tional part­ner net­work, the HTGF has sup­ported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. Its team of expe­ri­enced invest­ment man­agers and start-up experts sup­port the young com­pa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and pas­sion. The focus lies on high-tech start-ups in the fields of dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els, indus­trial tech­nol­ogy, life sci­ences, chem­istry and related busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal investors have invested more than 2.4 bil­lion euros of cap­i­tal in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 1,500 fol­low-up financ­ing rounds. The fund has also suc­cess­fully sold shares in more than 100 com­pa­nies. Con­tact Nova­Pump GmbH Ronald Reich, Am Stein­born 103a 07749 Jena T.: +49 3641 4814938 info@novapump.de