Tria Heart Valve Made with Proprietary LifePolymer Reimagines Material, Design and Manufacturing to Solve Long-Standing Heart Valve Issues
Foldax® announced today that it has been selected as a finalist in the Fierce Innovation Awards – Life Sciences Edition 2020, a peer-reviewed awards program from the publisher of Fierce Biotech and Fierce Pharma, produced by Questex. The competition highlights companies that demonstrate innovative solutions, technologies, and services that have the potential to make the greatest impact for biotech and pharma companies. Foldax was recognized as a finalist in the category of Medical Device Innovation.
Foldax was selected as a finalist for its innovative Tria™ heart valve. The Tria valve reimagines the heart valve by incorporating a new, proprietary biopolymer – LifePolymer™ – with an innovative valve design intended to eliminate calcification, withstand stresses and strains without failure, and restore patient quality of life without lifelong use of anticoagulants. Tria is also the first and only heart valve to be robotically manufactured, reducing variability, enabling high precision, repeatability, and quality, while substantially improving the economics of heart valve manufacturing.
The awards program’s applications were reviewed by an exclusive panel of executives from major biotech and pharma companies including Astellas, Accenture, AstraZeneca, Angiocrine Bioscience, Biotech Research Group, NIHR Clinical Research Network, Medidata Solutions and PPD. All applications were evaluated based on the following criteria: effectiveness, technical innovation, competitive advantage, financial impact, and true innovation. Winners will be announced in the 2020 Innovation Report set to publish by Fierce Life Sciences on September 14, 2020.
“It is gratifying to see continued recognition of Foldax’s mission of reinventing the replacement heart valve and addressing the tradeoffs of current replacement valves. Beyond the technical achievements, it is rewarding to see our Tria valves actually change a patient’s life. We recently reached a major milestone – the one-year implant anniversary of our first Tria aortic valve patient – who is doing great and back to running. Our team in Salt Lake City had the honor to meet him recently, and seeing the culmination of their hard work is what drives each person at Foldax,” stated Ken Charhut, Executive Chairman of Foldax.
