The Ascyrus Medical Dissection Stent story

If you’ve read my story you will know my sweet spot is working with surgeon inventors. I bring the commercial disciplines to support their creativity.

I’d like to tell you about one particular surgeon inventor, Dr Ali Shahriari, and our journey together.

We met when I was running an aortic device business and Ali was an innovative US-based cardiothoracic surgeon. We would talk about the unresolved aortic surgical problems and Ali would always lament how he didn’t want to leave these problems unresolved for his patients.

Some years later I am back in Australia and Ali and I reconnect. Imagine if we could solve the problem of the persistent false lumen that remains after surgical graft replacement of the dissected ascending aorta? Well guess what, Ali had progressed a solution to a prototype, the Ascyrus Medical Dissection Stent (AMDS) was born!

We spent six months working together to evaluate the market, working on our objectives and defining a strategy to deliver on those goals. The strategy revolved around taking the AMDS forward to market ready, entering those markets commercially where the clinical trial was focused, and then to pass the business and product over to a major device company with the resources to take the AMDS to patients and surgeons globally.

With CE Mark secured and successful entry to the markets in Canada and Germany, and phenomenal support from surgeons, Ascyrus Medical was sold to CryoLife in September 2020.

But that’s not the point or end of this story…

In May 2020, I read the first AMDS had been implanted in a patient in Australia. A patient and their family in Melbourne had benefitted and potentially their lives changed.

It was a great moment. The Australian launch is imminent. I am told the surgeons are lining up. I spoke with a surgeon friend of mine in Brisbane who made my day – “I am very keen to use this graft!”.

Great story and I’m so proud. The Ascyrus Medical Dissection Stent has followed me home.