Ramji Iyer, Founder and CEO of Laplace Interventional, joins the fight against one of structural heart medicine’s most complex problems: tricuspid valve replacement, after being in the medical technology arena for nearly 20 years. The company has a clinical-stage, transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement platform that will make the procedure easier, fit most patient anatomies and cause minimal disruption to surrounding cardiac structures.
Aortic and Mitral Valves, Tricuspid Valve.
Iyer has nearly 18 years experience in MedTech with a particular interest in developing technologies for structural heart disease from the aortic, mitral and tricuspid valves.
Iyer is a mechanical engineer by profession, and started at St. Jude Medical working on the following projects:
Surgical heart valves
Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) devices.
He went on to lead research and development (R&D) at a transcatheter mitral valve start-up which was ultimately acquired. In 2020 he established Laplace Interventional in Plymouth, Minnesota with the goal of solving the problems that arose with tricuspid valve disease.
A solution to Structural Heart’s Last Frontier.
“Transcatival Tricuspid Valve technology is the final frontier of all the valve technologies,” Iyer, Founder and CEO of Laplace Interventional told The Lens in a recent interview. “It has its own challenges, its own complexities, but it’s fun that you can find a solution to a cardiovascular issue with a tremendous impact on a patient’s quality of life.”
A patient’s health and quality of life can be heavily impacted by severe tricuspid regurgitation. If the tricuspid valve doesn’t keep blood from flowing backward into the right atrium, the patient can suffer from:
tiredness: that is intense and causing problems in everyday activities.
- Shortness of breath: The inability to breathe during exercise or during normal activities.
- Swelling: Fluid retention that may occur in the legs, ankles and elsewhere.
- Low exercise tolerance: When you can’t exercise as much as you need to.
- If the tricuspid regurgitation is more severe, it may lead to right-sided heart failure.
Creating Technology to Meet Unmet Clinical Needs
The cases of tricuspid valve disease are clinically and engineering challenges of their own. A sound knowledge of patient anatomy, complexity of the procedures and limitations of the current methods is necessary to develop the effective treatment options.
Instead of creating a device once it was complete, Iyer first identified a clinical need, and figured out the problems the technology would solve.
There are three key design considerations at the core of the Laplace Interventional approach:
- Platform simplicity: Creating a platform that will make TAVR easier to use.
- Anatomical adaptability: Fitting a wide variety of patient anatomy.
- Taking care of neighbouring buildings: Planning the technology so that it does not affect the neighbouring heart.
- These priorities are indicative of the engineering hurdles in tackling complex structural heart conditions with transcatheter approaches.
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