The Big Experiment
Ever wondered how technology start-ups, well, start-up? For most founder entrepreneurs, it is the biggest experiment they'll ever run. Like most experiments, the result isn't known beforehand and it often doesn't work first time. On a bigger scale, how do big tech companies turn innovative science into profit?
Mark Davison interviews founder scientists, executives, investors, communicators, and others in the technology start-up and corporate science ecosystems.
Learn how great ideas turned into thriving businesses (or not) from those who made it happen (or didn't). Get business tips, lessons learned, and life lessons straight from the people who know.
Inspiring, disastrous, funny: hear what life in a science-driven company is really like.
Straight-talking, no nonsense, but conversational style. All technical content is explained for the non-specialist - you don't need a PhD or fluency in jargon and technobabble.
The Big Experiment
Revolutionising Heart Surgery with Francis White
Heart valve surgery is one of the most complex procedures in medicine.
Francis White and his company Heart Biotech Ltd are trying to change all of that, by making heart valves in a totally new way. This will make surgery simpler and more accessible globally.
Building on the pioneering work of Professor Magdi Yacoub and colleagues, Heart Biotech are innovating the field by creating living tissue heart valves on a dissolving scaffold using the body's healing mechanisms. We explore the methods being used to produce these and the ways in which they will revolutionise both the procedure and patient’s lives.
Francis discusses the challenges and breakthroughs in tissue engineering, and how they create a biocompatible polymer scaffold that is absorbed by the body.
Heart Biotech’s work is in early stages, with animal studies showing promising results, and aims to secure FDA approval for human trials within three years.
The technology could revolutionise cardiac surgery, reducing risks and improving patient quality of life.
“We’re mimicking the biology that’s there already.” – Francis White
You’ll hear about:
00:52 - An introduction to David and his company
01:44 - How David got into science
05:37 - The scourge of valve disease
08:20 - The risk of repeat heart valve surgery
09:08 - Heart Biotech's body led approach
13:16 - The technology used to make the scaffold
16:04 - The next steps to prove product safety
19:12 - The dissolution of the cellular matrix
25:03 - What's left to do in the lab?
27:28 - What's the end point for Heart Biotech?
Connect with Francis:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/franciswhite/
Heart Biotech Ltd - https://heartbiotech.co.uk/
Connect with me:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdavison100/
If you need any lab equipment:
Grant Instruments: https://www.grantinstruments.com/
Grant Instruments on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grant-instruments-cambridge-ltd/
