Mitral Butterfly - the Asset of an Artificial Papillary Muscle in Mitral Valve Repair

AVVie (Angel Valve Vienna) has created a unique technology for mitral valve prolapse repair, the Mitral Butterfly implant. The market opportunity in degenerative mitral regurgitation (DMR) is estimated to be 2 million patients. Annually approximately 125 000 patients are diagnosed with severe mitral insufficiency. Since gold-standard in mitral valve repair is invasive open-heart surgery, more than 50% of the patient population remains untreated. Even new transcatheter options need further improvements to fully exploit clinical applications.

AVVie´s objective is to establish the Mitral Butterfly implant as standard of care for patients with degenerative mitral regurgitation. The technology is based on implant deployment via a transvascular catheter onto the compromised valve. The implant is comprised of a nitinol stent expanding a polymer mesh over the malfunctioning valve’s leaflet in one-step, significantly reducing the burden for the patient and time of the intervention and facilitating deployment. In recent device applications in chronic animals took less than 5 minutes.

The proprietary AVVie implant design has clear advantages over competing repair concepts; for example reducing time required for a sequential insertion of multiple artificial chordae. The polymer mesh contains the entire prolapsing segment, reconstructing a sufficient coaptation plane. The mesh extends from a nitinol frame along the annulus to a swing arm in the ventricle. The seesaw action of the swing arm mimicking an artificial papillary muscle is the unique repair choice, since chordal length, orientation and adjustment and importantly myocardial fixation becomes unnecessary.

Considering the large unmet clinical need of mitral repair in prolapse syndromes, AVVie covers both the cardiac surgery and interventional cardiology market. FIH is expected in Q1 2021.

The AVVie team is composed of experienced leaders in cardiac device development and application along with a young creative engineering team. “Experience meeting vision” inspires innovations in transcatheter mitral repair.