MI-VAD, Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Sean Lavin M.D. to our Strategic Advisory Board.

Dr. Lavin will focus on financial advice, strategic alliances, and investor outreach. As a physician with training in surgery, he will also be able to help MI-VAD source ideas on ways to help surgical implanters and patients around the world.

Sean enjoys working with early-stage companies. He uses his medical expertise and Wall Street experience to select innovative start-ups that often become very large multinational corporations that provide therapies to patients around the world. Since starting his Wall Street career in 2006, Sean has focused on minimally invasive devices that are able to treat patients with less associated morbidities and often lead to shorter hospital stays. These devices are almost always adopted as patients prefer the shorter recoveries and better outcomes and hospitals and payors prefer the decreased associated costs.

Dr. Lavin is the CEO of Alpha Lavin Advisors, LLC an advisory firm that he founded last year to help early-stage healthcare companies raise capital. He has held various roles and has been employed mostly as a senior analyst covering medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health at BTIG, Lazard Capital Markets, and Oppenheimer and Company from 2006 until the end of 2019. Before that, Dr.Lavin graduated with a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.D. from the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed two years of surgical residency training at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach where he treated patients in the emergency room, in trauma, and with the urologic, cardiac, plastic and reconstructive, transplant, vascular, thoracic, and general surgery teams. Sean uses his surgical knowledge to help him select devices that he thinks will do well and will be widely adopted.

Over the years, Sean has covered a number of companies in the assist device space including Abiomed (ABMD), Heartware (Previously HTWR – acquired by Medtronic), and Thoratec (Previously THOR – acquired by St Jude Medical (now Abbott). In many cases, Sean was early to recommend investment in these companies. He has traveled the world to meet with leading implanters to learn about each device and to review trial results. He has attended the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation meetings for many years to review presentations on various assist devices and to discuss their merits with implanters. He has also held several investor-focused assist device days where assist device companies have presented to investors, took questions, and held one on one meetings with institutional investors.

Upon being asked to join MI-VAD as a financial advisor, Sean said, “I have always been a very strong proponent of assist devices as they prolong life and importantly, make patients feel better. I have recommended investments in some of the associated companies over the years. While assist devices have saved thousands of lives there remain hundreds of thousands who could benefit. I believe if a novel ventricular assist device could reduce thrombosis, bleeding, and other adverse events, it will almost certainly increase adoption. MI-VAD’s unique design features support physiologic, pulsatile flow with backwash which is expected to reduce adverse events. Additionally, I believe that because the MI-VAD device does not interfere with the native heart, patients and their insurers will benefit from fewer complications and shorter hospital stays. The MI-VAD pump is expected to require about 25% of the energy needs of currently available VADs, which could ultimately allow for the elimination of drive lines with a fully implantable VAD solution. Most physicians feel this would be the ultimate goal for VAD therapy; a fully implantable VAD solution with a rechareable power source housed inside the body should lead to adoption rates around the world many times over the levels of the currently available devices. While building a novel LVAD and securing regulatory approval is no easy task, the compelling design features of the MI-VAD pump suggest a great future for this novel ventricular assist device and I am pleased to be assisting in the company’s efforts to advance this device.”

Paul Heney, Chairman of Mivad said, “We are very excited to have Sean accept a role as an advisor. We believe that with his Wall Street experience and relationships, he will be instrumental in helping our company source capital that will facilitate successful development and trial implants of our device. We also believe Sean will help to enhance the awareness and understanding of our technology among the strategic players in our space as we become a potential acquisition target as well as enhance our relationships with cardiologists and implanting surgeons. We also expect that the successes and mistakes that Sean has witnessed of the companies he has followed as an analyst will be very valuable as he helps guide MI-VAD into trials and eventually towards regulatory approvals and commercial launch.”

MI-VAD, Inc. is a privately owned developmental stage medical device company that is continuing the development and clinical testing of its proprietary and potentially revolutionary minimally invasive mechanical blood circulatory pump, or ventricular assist device that aspires to change the management of end-stage heart failure.

For more information, contact us at paul@mivadinc.com.