Revolutionary New Total Artificial Heart One Step Closer to Reality, Thanks to $4.2 Million Grant from National Institutes of Health

May 23, 2000 ,SALT LAKE CITY —A revolutionary new total artificial heart being developed by researchers at LDS Hospital, the Utah Artificial Heart Institute, and MedQuest Products Inc., is one step closer to reality thanks to a new $4.2 million grant awarded to the team by the National Institutes of Health.

The four-year grant is the first award given to artificial heart researchers under the NIH’s new Bioengineering Research Partnership program. The award was announced by the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, MD.

“This grant reaffirms Utah’s world leadership in the development and clinical use of artificial heart technology,” says James W. Long, MD, director of the artificial heart program at LDS Hospital, and an investigator on the grant.

The Utah-led team is the only recipient of significant NIH funds to complete the development of a new, revolutionary magnetically-suspended total artificial heart, known as the HeartQuest. The HeartQuest total artificial heart offers heart failure patients the promise of improved reliability and longevity over existing artificial hearts since it contains no friction-based internal parts that are prone to wear out over time. The HeartQuest will also be 30 to 40 percent of the size of existing total artificial hearts.

“The HeartQuest total artificial heart has a rotor that is suspended in a magnetic field so there are no internal touching parts,” says Dr. Don Olsen, president of the Utah Artificial Heart Institute, and the grant’s lead investigator. “Because of this unique design, we believe it may add 10 to 20 years of quality life for hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise die of heart failure every year.”

In the United States, more than 250,000 people die each year from severe heart failure, while millions more are hospitalized. While heart transplantation is an option for some patients, only about 2,000 donor human hearts are available annually for transplantation.

“The HeartQuest pump will immeasurably benefit heart failure patients in desperate need of a cost-effective, reliable, totally implantable artificial heart that provides a high quality of life,” says Pratap Khanwilkar, president of MedQuest. “This pump will enable recipients to return to normal activities, such as going back to work, and enjoying moderate exercise, such as hiking and golf.”

In making the award, the independent NIH review panel comprised of 10 engineering experts, nine medical and surgical experts, and one industry leader reported that ‘further advances in the field of heart failure treatment await the technological innovations proposed by the team’.

Using proprietary technology, an implantable-size HeartQuest prototype has already been designed and assembled by the development team. The design for clinical use is being completed , and will be developed and fully tested in the next two years.

The HeartQuest artificial heart development will continue to be supported through funding by the LDS Hospital-Deseret Foundation’s Heart & Lung Research Foundation. This philanthropic-based support has been complemented by the NIH grant. The development team expects to soon obtain additional financial support to reach the goal of clinical delivery of the HeartQuest total artificial heart in 2002.

LDS Hospital revived the use of the total artificial heart in Utah in April of 1995, when a team led by Dr. Long successfully implanted a CardioWest C-70 total artificial heart in Boise resident Al Marsden as a bridge-to-transplantation. LDS Hospital was only the third center in the nation to implant the C-70 and the first Utah medical center to implant a total artificial heart since Dr. Barney Clark was implanted with a permanent total artificial heart at the University of Utah in 1982. LDS Hospital currently is the only Utah center implanting total artificial hearts.

The HeartQuest development is being conducted by an already-existing partnership between: Intermountain Health Care’s LDS Hospital; the Utah Artificial Heart Institute; and MedQuest Products Inc. They are being assisted by the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; Magnetic Moments LLC, Goleta, California, and Antakamatics Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.



Company Background
MedQuest is a pioneer in the development of implantable ventricular assist devices (VADs). The HeartQuest™ VAD is an implantable, centrifugal pump that utilizes a magnetically suspended impeller to provide a frictionless, wear-free pumping action. A VAD boosts the output of a failing heart to normal levels. Congestive heart failure is the fastest growing segment of the cardiovascular disease market and is diagnosed in 550,000 Americans each year; over 200,000 deaths annually are attributed to congestive heart failure according to American Heart Association 2002 statistics .

MedQuest®, HeartQuest™, and MagLev™ are trademarks of MedQuest® Products Inc.