Impella CardioSystems AG

Manufacturing and marketing of intracorporeal micro blood pumps for use in coronary surgery and cardiology

Impella CardioSystems was founded in December 1999 as a spin-off of the RWTH Aachen by Dr. Rolf Sammler, Dr. Thorsten Sieß and Christoph Nix. Investors of Impella are Oxford Bioscience Partners (USA), Medica Venture Partners (Israel), ABN AMRO (NL), Giza Venture Capital (Israel), Accelerated Technologies / ATI Group (USA) and Impella board of directors and employees (Germany). The company currently has ~50 employees.

The Company was acquired by Abiomed Inc. in 2005.

Thorsten Sieß, Dr.
Javier Jimenez
Dirk Michels

Neuenhofer Weg 3
52074 Aachen
Germany
Phone: +49-241-8860-0
Fax: +49-241-8860-111

Impella so far manufactures the world’s smallest minimally invasive, high performance pump systems with integrated motor and sensors for use in coronary surgery and cardiology. It has been designed to provide a temporary solution while the patient is waiting for heart surgery or heart transplantation. Recover® LP 2.5 is a minimally invasive ventricular unloading catheter, which is inserted percutaneously via the femoral artery and delivers up to 2.5 litres of blood per minute. To date, the Recover LP 2.5 has been implanted more than 70 times in European centres. The Recover® LP 5.0 is a minimally invasive ventricular unloading catheter, which is placed via a femoral artery cut-down. It delivers up to 5 litres blood per minute. Impella offers an overall system, which includes impella®mobile console, impella®power supply and impella®purger. The Recover ®LD is the smallest available left ventricular unloading catheter, weighing only 8 grams. Recover® RD is the smallest available right ventricular unloading catheter weighing only 17 gram and is fully implantable.

The company’s technology is protected by some 30 patents.

The following section contains a selection of the company’s most relevant patents. For comprehensive patent information please refer to the espacenet databases.