Shockwave Medical Gains $40 Million in Funding for Lithoplasty System

May 19, 2015—Shockwave Medical announced $40 million in funding, co-led by returning investor Sofinnova Partners and new investor Venrock, with the participation of RA Capital, Deerfield, Sectoral Asset Management, Ally Bridge Group, and two undisclosed large-cap strategic investors. According to the company, the financing will be used for development of the company’s Lithoplasty balloon catheters in peripheral, coronary, and aortic valve applications.

According to Shockwave Medical, Lithoplasty is a novel balloon-based technology that utilizes integrated lithotripsy, a pulsatile mechanical energy commonly used to break up kidney stones, to disrupt both superficial and deep calcium and normalize vessel wall compliance prior to low-pressure balloon dilatation. Lithoplasty is designed to be naturally gentle to soft tissue while remaining hard on calcium, the tissue that limits vessel expansion and the effectiveness of current technologies.

Shockwave Medical advised that clinical work has also been conducted in coronary vessels and will begin in aortic valves later this year. Results from the first-in-man study of five patients with moderate to severe coronary calcification were presented in September at TCT 2014, the 26th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics scientific symposium, in Washington, DC. Those results demonstrated safety, tolerability, deliverability, and effectiveness for Lithoplasty as a pretreatment of calcified coronary lesions before stenting.

As a treatment for peripheral arterial disease (PAD), clinical results to date have demonstrated safety, tolerability, deliverability, and effectiveness of Lithoplasty. In January 2015, the Shockwave Lithoplasty system gained European CE Mark approval for PAD treatment.