By necessity, small companies such as VXi function through the part-time efforts of a handful of dedicated individuals. In the early days, VXi was largely a technology company. More recently, additional people have joined VXi to round off the corporate management team. Details of these individuals are as follows.

Larry Blankenship, Chairman of the Board and CEO

e-mail: lblankenship@valvexchange.com

Larry Blankenship is a highly experienced medical device industry executive and start-up CEO with over 25 years experience converting technical ideas into healthcare products and getting them into commercial distribution. He has guided more than two dozen healthcare products from concept, through regulatory clearance, and into the marketplace. He served as a manager or officer in divisions of three major corporations (Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Battelle Labs), and has been CEO or senior officer in three startups: Vitalmetrics, Inc. (acquired by Bard/Tyco), The Larren Corporation (acquired by Battelle), and Cardio-Optics, developing novel catheter imaging technology. He has raised private and venture capital on multiple occasions, and is a leader in the Colorado BioScience business community. Throughout his career, Mr. Blankenship has focused on helping entrepreneurs and inventors convert their medical device technology ideas into real products, including establishing the needed business structure, funding, and operations. This is the case at ValveXchange as it was at Cardio-Optics, The Larren Corporation, Battelle Laboratories and Vitalmetrics, Inc. Serving as Vice President of Medical Programs for Battelle Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, (1996 to 2000) he assessed pipeline technologies from within Battelle and its affiliated organizations including Brookhaven National Laboratories, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories to funnel pipeline R&D programs into commercial medical applications, such as bio-hazard detection systems, bacterial infection assay equipment, wound closure devices and implantable polymers for carrying radioactive isotopes, and connecting these Battelle technologies with leading medical industry corporations such as Becton Dickinson, Johnson & Johnson, and The Thermo-Electron Companies. Prior to Battelle, he was CEO, President and Co-founder of The Larren Corporation, Boulder, Colorado, (1989 to 1996), a leading-edge medical device industry product development and consulting company whose services included the assessment of the business and regulatory environment, and development and approval of technologies such as thermal dilution cardiac output and infrared SvO2 measurement, continuous cardiac output measurement, portable drug infusion pumps, intra-cranial pressure monitors, critical drug self-injection systems, portable power systems for Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), Multi-lead ECG systems, disposable endoscopic biopsy tools, electrosurgical tools for arthroscopic surgery, flexible angioscopes and ureteroscopes and surgical video systems and light sources. While at Larren, Mr. Blankenship personally led a project to assist St. Jude Medical in completion of the design and introduction of the “Masters Series” rotatable heart valve. This provided Mr. Blankenship with significant first-hand experience in the heart valve business. Mr. Blankenship also served at Valleylab, Boulder, Colorado, (1985-1989) as Director of Technology for their Infusion Systems Division (helping prepare this division for divestiture), and as CTO for Vitalmetrics, a San Diego, California start-up company developing innovative new products for open heart surgery and neuro-surgery. Mr. Blankenship serves on the Board of Directors of the Colorado BioScience Association (www.cobioscience.com) and brings vital business, executive and commercialization expertise to VXi. TOP

Ivan Vesely, Ph.D., Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

e-mail: vesely@valvexchange.com

Dr. Vesely has been the H. Russell Smith Foundation Endowed Professor of Cardiothoracic Research and Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at University of Southern California. Previously, he founded the Cleveland Clinic’s heart valve laboratory and, over ten years, built it into the best-funded valve laboratory in the world. He is well-known in the tissue valve field by way of several key publications that identified a new mechanism for bioprosthetic valve degeneration, and through his work in heart valve modeling and valvular tissue engineering. Dr. Vesely invented VXi’s rapidly exchangeable bioprosthetic valve, served as the start-up CEO, and then recruited the current management team. Dr. Vesely has recently stepped back from full-time research to focus on developing the exchangeable valve at VXi as its Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Vesely previously founded Sonometrics, Inc. an ultrasound catheter guidance company, where he developed technology that was subsequently acquired by Cardiac Pathways (now Boston Scientific). He is the author of 14 issued patents and over 80 publications. Dr. Vesely received his Ph.D. in Biophysics and Electrical Engineering degrees from University of Western Ontario. TOP

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