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 start-up CEO of numerous medical device companies. Mr. Blankenship recently left Cardio-Optics after taking their intracardiac imaging system through development and FDA approval and recently joined VXi as Chairman of the Board and CEO. Mr. Blankenship has over 25 years experience converting technical ideas into healthcare products and getting them into the marketplace. He brought 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 (Bard/Tyco), Larren (Battelle), and most recently Cardio-Optics, where he raised $8 million personally, and $26.5 million with other board members. He served as CEO and COO of Cardio-Optics from 2001 to early 2007. Prior to Cardio-Optics, Mr. Blankenship was Vice President of Medical Programs for Battelle Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, (1996 to 2000) where he assessed pipeline technologies from within Battelle and its affiliated organizations including Brookhaven National Laboratories, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. He worked with Battelle and its clients and affiliates on commercial medical applications, such as bio-hazard detection systems, portable enteral feeding systems, bacterial infection assay equipment, intra-cranial pressure monitors, critical drug self-injection systems, wound closure devices and implantable polymers for carrying radioactive isotopes and connected the 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 consultancy company whose services included the assessment of the business and regulatory potential of technologies such as thermal dilution cardiac output and infrared SvO2 measurement, continuous cardiac output measurement, portable drug infusion pumps, 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 associated 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 provides Mr. Blankenship with significant first-hand experience with the implantable valve business. Mr. Blankenship also served in Valleylab, Boulder, Colorado, (1985-1989) as Director of Technology for their troubled Infusion Systems Division, and for Vitalmetrics, a San Diego, California start-up company developing innovative new products for open heart surgery and neuro-surgery as Vice President of Technology, Quality and Regulatory Affairs (1980-1985). Mr. Blankenship thus brings vital commercialization expertise to VXi. TOP

Ivan Vesely, Ph.D., Founder, President & 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 though 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 at the University of Southern California to spend most of his time 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 12 issued patents and over 80 publications. Dr. Vesely received his Ph.D. in Biophysics and E.E. degrees from University of Western Ontario. TOP