Capstan Medical took a key step towards its vision of launching the first robotic cardiac valve surgery system, landing $110M in Series C funding.
- The new funding eclipses the $31M Series B round that Capstan raised in August 2023, bringing its total funding to over $150M.
- Capstan earmarked the funds for expanding its team to meet its upcoming development goals and execute its future pivotal trials.
Focusing on mitral and tricuspid valve diseases, Capstan’s treatment combines transcatheter implantation of a folded valve replacement with its X-ray and ultrasound-guided robot to align the low-profile implant with the beating heart valve.
- Capstan hopes this approach will enable it to treat patients whose anatomy or health risks may prevent them from receiving traditional minimally invasive or open surgeries.
Currently, there are no commercially available catheter-based implants for completely replacing a leaky mitral or tricuspid valve, meaning the diseases are largely treated via open-heart surgery.
- This means that less than 2% of the over 5 million MR and TR patients are actually receiving treatment, in part because many don’t qualify for open heart surgery.
- As a result of the gap, analysts estimate that a minimally invasive robotic approach to MR and TR treatments could become a multibillion-dollar market.
Capstan’s Series C adds to notable momentum in the broader robotic cardiology market, which has seen steady adoption increases across a wide array of applications over the last few years:
- Robotically-assisted CABG (1k+ procedures performed)
- Robotic aortic valve replacement (100+ study patients)
- Robotic mitral valve repair (2.4k+ cases so far)
- Robotic SAVR + CABG (1 procedure so far)
The Takeaway
While they once sounded like science fiction, robotic heart procedures are becoming a reality, and Capstan’s robotic system could be poised to take on one of the biggest care gaps in mitral and tricuspid valve diseases.
