David Israeli Podcast Transcript
David Israeli joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is David Israeli. Dr. David Israeli is the Chairman and CEO of Magenta Medical, a startup company developing a temporary mechanical circulatory support device for acute indications.
Previously, he was a life sciences general partner at Patanko Venture Capital, one of the leading VC groups in Israel, where he led investments in the areas of medical devices and digital health. David holds an MD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, David. Welcome to the show!
David Israeli: Thank you for having me. Good to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you again. This is just so fun getting to meet somebody every single day from around the world today. David, you’re hailing out of the great country of Israel. And again, we’re all thinking of you today and supporting you. So, thank you again.
And David, thank you very much for having me. You’re very welcome. We’re going to jump right into your questions here and let’s talk about your career as a physician. You’re a senior executive board member. Now you’re the chairman and CEO of Magenta Medical. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
David Israeli: Absolutely. Gladly. So, I am a physician by training. Obviously, I started medical school with the full intent of becoming a full fledged clinician. It’s a long path. As you know, seven plus years in Israel to become a licensed physician. But as chance occurs oftentimes in our careers. I embarked on a parallel technology track as I was a medical student.
I was hired by a company that was starting to develop what we call today an EMR, an electronic medical record in the OBGYN space. I was doing that part time as a medical student and essentially fell in love with a combination. Of technology and healthcare, not realizing at the time that there are other avenues where I can put my skills to good use outside of a clinician’s career.
And what I decided to do is ultimately graduate with an MD. I am a physician and I’m licensed to practice in Israel, but once I graduated from medical school, I basically moved to the U S. Got my MBA and made a full transition to the other side of health healthcare to industry. And I’ve been involved since in developing new technologies in the healthcare space.
And frankly, what inspired me is really to stay within the realm of do good and put my education to good use. However, instead of the one on one path. Which is the common interface between a physician and a patient. I feel like my career path has enabled me to put my skills into greater impact where by developing new medical technologies by proxy or indirectly one can actually impact a vast number of lives across the globe.
And that’s essentially what I’ve been doing in the last 20 years.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And I know that’s a lot. I’m sure people looked at you kind of funny because, hey, you just went to medical school and all that time and money spent there and then you switch. But, you know, you stayed in the industry. I’m a technologist by trade, but I’ve been in health care 20 years and I love this space.
So, I appreciate everything that you’re doing to help the community, David. I appreciate that. And David, let’s move to the next question here. Thank you, David. I’m excited to talk about health care. I just told you my background is in tech and health care. There’s a lot of innovative technology in what Magenta does, and it’s currently developing the world’s smallest heart pump.
Can you walk us through the benefits of this technology?
David Israeli: Absolutely. And thank you for asking about this. Obviously, I’m very passionate about what magenta is doing. I’ve been leading magenta for the last six years, and we have dedicated ourselves to helping. Patients who come into the hospital with acute episodes of heart failure.
In other words, when people come into the hospital and their heart is not functioning sufficiently as a pump, meaning that not enough blood is being pumped out of the blood to perfuse critical organs like the brain, the kidneys, and so on and so forth, they oftentimes. require what people refer to as mechanical circulatory support.
Some kind of a mechanical pump manmade that basically augments cardiac output and allows the patient to survive through the acute episode through the hospitalization. And the goal is to discharge the patient with our own heart. So, we’re not a permanent solution to heart failure. We’re not looking to replace the patient’s heart.
We’re basically providing a temporary bridge to recovery as we call it. And that bridge can be anywhere from several hours to several days. But not more than that. A typical condition would be, for example, an acute myocardial infarction or a heart attack, as people know this term a little bit better.
Some of these patients come into the hospital with very poor heart function. Again, the pump is not providing enough blood flow to the vital organs of the body. And Magenta has been able to develop the next generation mechanical circulatory support. It’s a very, very small pump. It is inserted through the groin, just like a typical catheterization procedure.
And when I say small. It’s measured in the friend scale, like any other catheter and interventional cardiology. We are a 10 French device. Our competitors that are currently in the market are 14 French and above. So much larger diameter. It requires typically a more involved surgical procedure to be placed.
So one of our main advantages is obviously the size, the minimal invasiveness the minimal invasive nature. Of the procedure itself, and then the other side of the equation is the flow. So besides being an elegant procedure with minimal complications to the patient, the clinical requirements oftentimes dictate large flow coming from the pump, the more severe the condition of the patient, the more.
Augmented flow or more artificial flow is required by the patient. And we’ve been able to not only miniaturize the pump to 10 French, but we can expand the device inside the heart to a much larger diameter, about 10 millimeters in diameter, almost half an inch. And through that pump, we’re able to deliver.
An excess of five liters per minute of average flow. That is the highest flow that we are aware of in this category. In fact, five liters per minute is the full cardiac output of a grown adult. So, we can basically replace the entire cardiac output of the native heart. Providing that security blanket, as I mentioned, and allowing the patient’s heart to recover and then we can wean the patient from the pump, and ultimately, most of these patients are able to be discharged home with their pump.
One of the things that we did beyond developing it is obviously move forward to conducting clinical trials. The regulatory process involves conducting these trials at a smaller scale initially, and then moving on to larger trials. So we performed our procedure in 30 patients so far, 15 of which have been done outside of the U.
S. And 15 have been enrolled in the U. S. In hospitals from the New York metropolitan area. And in fact, very recently, as recently as two weeks ago. We published a very nice results from a safety and performance standpoint. And that was part of the TCT conference in San Francisco, which is the largest interventional cardiology conference in the world.
So, we’re very excited about what we’re doing and the feedback that we’re receiving from the clinical community is equally encouraging.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Thank you again. I appreciate breaking that down for us. That’s I just love technology. This is a technology platform. And of course, there’s technology involved with what you’re doing there as well.
And that’s just amazing. So, thank you, David. Moving forward. As I mentioned, we are a technology publication and platform. We’d like to ask you if you’re leveraging some of that new and emerging technologies in your business or your tech stack. Is there anything you might be able to share with us today?
David Israeli: Thank you. Absolutely. And thank you again for asking that. Because what’s not trivial about the magenta technology is that when we deal with heart pumps or mechanical circulatory support in general for many years, there has been the unspoken understanding or expectation that a pump is a rigid structure by nature.
And the heart, no pun intended of every mechanical circulatory support system is basically the impeller, which is just the engineering term for a propeller it’s essentially the component that rotates at a high speed, and it is the component that is responsible for mobilizing. The blood on behalf of the heart, helping it essentially to recover what we’ve been able to do is essentially develop a self-expanding propeller.
It is made out of biocompatible known materials, but the secret sauce basically of bringing these materials together is really at the core of the magenta innovation, and it allows this propeller. To essentially crimp down or be folded in a way that is very elegantly small, but once you arrive with a device and the propeller into the target organ, into the heart, we can deploy it or expand it back into its functional.
Diameter providing the therapy, as I mentioned over several hours to days. And at the end of the procedure. The process is completely reversible. So you’re able to fold back the device or crimp it, as we call it in interventional cardiology speak back into the delivery system, take it out of the body through the same small hole in the groin that we use to introduce the device into the body in the first place.
And then we have a very Yeah. Elegantly small puncture in the groin that can be sealed and closed using very simple technique that every interventional cardiologist masters as part of their training. So that is really at the core of our innovation, that self-expanding propeller element.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that.
That’s awesome that we get to dive into some of the nuts and bolts of what you’re doing there as far as your heart pump. So, thank you. And last question. That’s kind of a multi-pronged question here, David, but what’s next for the company and what’s that call to action for us?
David Israeli: Yeah, so, this is a long process.
Medical innovation is not only difficult from the engineering standpoint, but it is a highly regulated space, as you know, and our audience knows, and we have to go through a very regimented. Process of obtaining regulatory approval FDA in the case of the U. S. and other regulatory bodies around the world.
So having completed this initial study that I mentioned before in the U. S. which we call an early feasibility study, those 15 patients that essentially. Give us confidence that the technology works and it provides initial signs of safety and potential performance. One needs to move on into a larger scale clinical trial called a pivotal study.
That is also planned to be conducted in the United States. It will involve several hundreds of. Of patients, the final tally or number of patients is to be discussed with the FDA and agreed upon. This is still in process. But this is a very large undertaking involving hiring a team in the U S on the ground to support that large clinical study.
And at the conclusion of that clinical trial, assuming that it is successful. One needs to submit the application to the FDA and ramp up commercial activities in order to bring this very important technology as we view it to the market and provide access to patients. In order to do that we rely on.
Multiple partners, most importantly investors who have supported us so far. And I imagine that we will need to add other investors into the mix to help us bring this technology to market. And we’re also calling out for potential strategic partners. Those large meta companies that are currently in the market to partner with us and basically help us accelerate the process and help us bring this important technology to patients as soon as possible.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And I really do see a lot of success out of this because there’s a big need, obviously in the. Heart world, right? We’ve got, that’s one of the biggest challenges here. I know that in the U S is people’s health around their heart. So, I appreciate that and continued success to you. And I want to also let you know, David, it was a pleasure having you on today.
And I really look forward to speaking with you real soon.
David Israeli: Yeah, the pleasure was all mine. I appreciate the time. I hope this was interesting to you and to your audience. And I hope to be able to update everybody on important milestones ahead.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
David Israeli Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
