Coherex Medical To Deliver Presentation At In3 East, Boston
Salt Lake City, UT - Coherex Medical, Inc., a privately held medical device company, recently announced it has been invited to deliver a presentation at In3 East, Boston, one of the leading venture capital and strategic partnership conferences in the United States.
Coherex executives will present information about the company and its Coherex FlatStent PFO Closure System, a new medical technology designed to help close a heart defect – a Patent Foramen Ovale – that occurs in approximately 25 percent of the population.
The Coherex presentation will be delivered on Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 5:40 p.m. (EDT) during the In3 East conference, which will be held at the Westin Hotel – Copley Place in Boston. Conference attendees will also be able to meet one-on-one with Coherex executives at the company's product exhibit during the networking reception following the Coherex presentation.
Although this will be Coherex's first presentation at a VC conference, the company has previously raised more than $11.5 million in private funding, including $8.525 million in an A Round of venture capital funding that was announced in April 2007 and led by Oxford Biosciences and vSpring Capital.
About Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) Heart Defects
A foramen ovale is a tunnel-like opening between the upper chambers of the heart that is present in all fetuses. This opening allows blood to bypass the lungs until a baby is born and draws its first breath. Normally, the foramen ovale closes soon after an infant is born. However, should this opening fail to close naturally within a year after birth, the opening is said to remain patent and the condition is called a patent foramen ovale (PFO).
A common heart defect that occurs in roughly 25 percent of the population, PFOs can allow blood to bypass the lungs by shunting directly from the right side of the heart to the left, thus
- increasing the likelihood of blood clots in the heart flowing directly to the brain; and
- preventing the filtration of chemicals out of the blood that occurs in the lungs.
While the presence of a PFO does not present risks to all people who have this heart defect, the condition has been linked to at least two medical conditions that may benefit greatly from PFO closure: cryptogenic stroke and migraine.
According to the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association, approximately 500,000 strokes each year worldwide may be attributable to the presence of a PFO, which represents a potential annual market size of close to $2 billion.
On the other hand, migraine is a common disorder, affecting approximately 12 percent of the adult population in Western countries. While a connection between PFOs and migraines has not yet been proven scientifically, significant anecdotal evidence exists to suggest a possible relationship. As such, the worldwide market for PFO closure to treat migraine patients has been estimated to be more than $15 billion per year.
About the Coherex FlatStent PFO Closure System
The Coherex FlatStent PFO Closure System is similar in use and function to self-expanding vascular stents, which are widely used by Interventional Cardiologists during heart surgery. However, Coherex's patent-pending FlatStent Closure System incorporates a unique fusion of PFO closure mechanisms and accepted medical practices in a design expected to utilize a body's defense systems to help naturally seal a PFO tunnel (after the Coherex FlatStent is implanted in a heart).
SOURCE: Coherex Medical