Chaid Schwarz, Medical 21 - Interview with Scott Pantel | LSI USA '24

Scott Pantel  0:00  
I am here in the medical 21 business lounge with Jade Schwartz, who is the head of Research and Development at medical 21 that's great, Jade. What problem are you guys solving?

Chaid Scharz  0:11  
So we're working on developing a new synthetic coronary artery bypass graft, leaving it the need to actually harvest the vessels from a patient. Typically, they would take the saphenous vein from your leg, the radial artery from your arm, and they would actually have to harvest those out surgically or endoscopically, where they actually make incisions at your groin, knee and at your ankle, and then they would resect that graft out of your body before they would open your chest actually implant it. So we're trying to make a product that we would pull off the shelf and directly implant into the patient. And

Scott Pantel  0:44  
you have the, I think you have the product here to our viewers, what it looks like.

Chaid Scharz  0:47  
So we're a regenerative tissue engineering group. This is a scaffold structure that's supported by a nitinol support for the life of the patient. Once we implant it from the aorta down to the coronary artery, we actually utilize the patient's own immune response to it to infiltrate cells from the outside, to regenerate, over time, a new tissue that is the patient's own vessel. So in the meantime, our material will be absorbed out to a couple of years as that new tissue is forming with support of the scaffold structure for the life of the patient, that limits dilatation aneurysm formation, and in the long run, gives them stability of that product, which is their new artery. In the end, that's

Scott Pantel  1:29  
amazing. And I was going to ask you the question, I know there's a lot of companies over the years who have tried to attack this problem. We refer to this issue that you're solving as the holy grail of cardiac surgery. I was going to ask you, what make you guys different, but you just, I think, shared. But if there was for the layman, if there was one thing that's different about your technology that some of the previous entrepreneurs that went out for this problem didn't have that you do, what is it? Yeah, so

Chaid Scharz  1:59  
when we first started the company, we actually failed really well. So well. We made materials that were permanent implants, structurally supporting for the life of that implant. Those failed in three mechanisms, luminal thrombotic occlusion of our grafts, insomnal hyperplasia, anastomosis, where they're connected to the aorta and the distal coronary arteries. The over proliferation of stress at that locations of cells would close them down, and then finally, latent immune response associated with a foreign material that you're implanting. We shifted away from that into regenerative technologies, refocusing on the idea that we harness the patient's ability to heal in and of itself, just as if you had to cut in your skin, it would bleed, that bleeding will stop and form a clot. The clot forms a scab, and eventually you have your skin tissue that's healed. We want to utilize and harness the same healing opportunity that the body already has in place. So that's the frontier that we're pushing with our own technology.

Scott Pantel  2:57  
That's incredible. And I have come by your booth several times during the show, and you've got, seems like you got people lined up to meet. I know that your your fearless leader, Manny villafana, is very well known in the industry, and I think it's been a real treat for the people here to start to meet some of the rest of the management team that's behind the scenes working on things. Thanks for being here. Before we end this. I guess the final question that I would ask is, why does, why does solving this problem matter like what? What is it at the end of the day, what does it mean to the world?

Chaid Scharz  3:30  
Yeah, it's pretty significant. I think the number of patients that would benefit we were on our way down here. Let me give a primary example. Gentleman. He was in his mid 50s. He had six bypass grafts implanted in his chest recently, three months ago, the most difficult part of him was not cutting open his chest. It was not the procedure on his heart. It was the harvesting of the vessels from his arms, both arms and both legs, to get enough vasculature to actually revascularize this heart, the pain, the risk of infection and the rehabilitation three months later, still having rehab associated with that. If we can make a product that would limit having to do a two hour procedure before you even begin the Open Heart procedure of bypassing those occluded segments on the arteries, and limit the need for rehabilitation. And finally, to give an opportunity for patients who have no vasculature available. If you have severe diabetes or you have varicosities associated with the saphenous vein in your legs, you have limited ability to harvest the vessels in the first place, so giving an option for them, but also giving an alternative to harvesting those vegetables for many of us who someday may need bypass, would be a huge leap in the field of cardiovascular surgery.

Scott Pantel  4:48  
That's amazing, the holy grail of cardiac surgery. I know that the animal data has been incredible, and there's some other big milestones that are coming up that we're you're probably not able to talk about here, but we've been following you for some time. It. We're rooting for you, and we know that you're doing big things. So thank you for being a part of this event, and I'm glad that I was able to sneak in here in between all the investors that are lined up. So thank you. Appreciate you having us. What a great event. All right, thank you. Thanks.