Never underestimate synchronicity. Or the lure of a free lunch. Both played a key role in bringing two co-founders together to launch Corveus Medical, a startup taking aim at heart failure with a novel, catheter-based therapy, and one of the newest members of Fogarty’s Company Accelerator Program (CAP).
Parallel Paths
Corveus co-founders Tyler Melton and Ishan Kamat, MD, were undergraduates at UT Austin at the same time but never met. They both earned MBA degrees at Rice University and were inspired by William Cohn, MD, an accomplished cardiothoracic surgeon and medical device innovator. Their paths finally intersected at Texas Medical Center (TMC) Biodesign in Houston, TX, where they became teammates focused on unmet clinical needs in the cardiovascular space.
After graduating with degrees in biomedical engineering and biology, Melton worked in healthcare technology consulting before going back to school to obtain an MBA. “I wanted more of a hands-on engineering role in the medical device industry, building a solution and taking it forward,” he said. He went on to a position at the Johnson & Johnson Center for Device Innovation at TMC, which was run by Cohn, then applied to the Biodesign program.
Kamat pursued a different path, going from undergraduate directly into medical school at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, TX. There he attended a lecture given by Cohn on innovation in cardiac surgery and the total artificial heart. While he admits the initial draw was the free lunch, by the end of the presentation he was captivated. “I went up to Dr. Cohn after the lecture and asked him how I could get involved in medical device innovation,” Kamat said.
With the goal of building his business acumen, Kamat transferred to a dual MD/MBA program. Simultaneously, he began volunteering to help startups. “I helped with preclinical studies, then did clinical strategy for one group, and market definition for another, and so on,” he said. The more he learned, the deeper he was hooked.
Determined to both practice and innovate in the field of cardiology, Kamat was able to garner support from mentors during residency at BCM Internal Medicine, as well as from Cohn and the BCM Department of Surgery, and together they developed an entirely new pathway for him. “The two-year, grant-funded research fellowship set up a multi-institutional collaboration between BCM and the TMC Biodesign program and innovate specifically in the cardiovascular space,” he said.
Focusing on Heart Failure
Working together, Kamat and Melton went through the Biodesign program from August of 2020 to July of 2021. With COVID limiting their ability to do in-person observations in hospitals, they concentrated on clinical research. This led to Kamat uncovering an early approach to heart failure that seemed promising but previously required a high-risk surgical procedure. “I fell in love with the idea of taking something that was known historically and applying modern tools and methods to make it feasible and safe,” he said.
Heart failure, when the heart can’t pump enough oxygenated blood to meet the body’s needs, affects more than 64 million people worldwide, and its prevalence is increasing along with the aging of the population. Corveus hopes to help many of those patients—especially those who are unresponsive to currently available treatments—through a minimally invasive procedure that deactivates a nerve demonstrated to be a driver behind heart failure.
A Strong Partnership
By the time Melton and Kamat finished their Biodesign training, they had an initial prototype. “We started our animal studies pretty quickly and that allowed us to raise our first round of funding, which was just under $1M,” said Melton. The research fellowship enabled the partners to work together full-time for another year, making steady progress and cementing a business relationship and friendship marked by exceptional synergy.
“During COVID, we worked together on site almost every day, even though almost everything else was shut down,” said Kamat. “And it created this strong partnership because we were really in the trenches together.”
“We have complementary strengths,” said Melton. “I’m really good about starting and driving things forward, he’s really good about filling in all the gaps and refining to a finished product.”
After that second year, Kamat moved to California to become a cardiology fellow at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). “I chose to come to the Bay Area because it has the research expertise and mentorship in place to help me advance as a doctor and an innovator,” he said. “As soon as I got my feet on the ground UCSF plugged me into clinical trials and opportunities for advisership for Corveus. The innovation culture and support they provide – even for trainees – really sets UCSF apart.”
Joining Fogarty Innovation
Melton and Kamat continue to advance their startup, and the two participated in several incubation programs in the Bay Area before pursuing the opportunity at Fogarty.
“We’re at an inflection point right now where we want to draw on the expertise the Fogarty leadership team has in our specific area,” said Melton. “We know the team here can help ensure we are choosing the right clinical endpoints and help us mitigate some of the risks and issues they have seen in the past, while also having a full understanding of our commercialization pathway.” He continued, “If anyone can help us get through these next steps, it’s the team at Fogarty – this combination of experience and advice and guidance doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Kamat added, “Already, they’ve helped us utilize existing resources in ways we hadn’t thought of. It’s just that external perspective from people who have been here and done exactly this before.”
As the partners work to advance their technology and secure additional grants and funding, they are looking ahead to preparing for their first-in-human study, growing the company, and planning their roadmap toward future commercialization. While these milestones are all significant and complex, Melton and Kamat are confident that they will be able to achieve each with coaching and support from the Fogarty team.