Adventure Carmat, manufactures a French heart from A to Z - Le Figaro

Professor Alain Carpentier fought to the end for the implantation of artificial heart takes place in a hospital in the Hexagon and not abroad.

first 100% Artificial heart was implanted in the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris. Which delighted his creator, Professor Alain Carpentier, now 80 years old, dreamed for twenty years. But it is almost. The French authorities so long to allow the first tests that Carmat had finally turned to foreign hospitals, Saudi Arabia, Poland and Belgium, loan them to launch. These four hospitals are authorized for the operation, as in France, Marie-Lannelongue surgical center, Plessis-Robinson (Hauts-de-Seine) and the University Hospital of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique).

Since he works at his artificial heart, the cardiac surgeon has an obsession: that innovation is French. Alain Carpentier, honored in 2007 the prestigious scientific prize Albert Lasker, never fully recovered from having to entrust the development of his heart valves to American industry in the 1970s, after failing to find the funds and necessary support in France, especially from Rhône-Poulenc. Its valves, designed in animal tissues, have revolutionized the market for heart valves and equip today millions of patients worldwide. They fortune California Edwards.

stubborn doctor has been successful. His artificial heart is, for now, blue-white-red. This alliance Alain Carpentier and Jean-Luc Lagardère, boss Matra (now EADS), which began to be beaten in the early 1990s.

Jean-Luc Lagardère has over ten years available CARMAT (Carpentier-Matra) a secret team with significant funds and the most advanced technology of aeronautics in numerical modeling, fluid mechanics and shipped. systems And Carmat, who also used the patents of the University Paris-VI, has installed its engineers and cleanroom Velizy, south of Paris, where he worked with a fifty high-tech companies. “Today 50 people between Carmat and various subcontractors, work to make it. If we add up all those who participated in the last ten years, more than 100 people were involved in this project, besides the clinical and medical teams “, says Alain Carpentier in the columns of the Sunday newspaper. The high-tech medical company, publicly traded, convinced enough of savers and investors Hexagon to go after its clinical trials, which will involve twenty people within two years.

Philippe Pouletty, a French physician who became a venture capitalist, was the first to support Carmat with its funds Truffle Capital, after the death of Jean-Luc Lagardère in 2003.

public bank OSEO, arriving later, is preparing to complete the cash start-up to take to European marking, that is to say, the authorization to implant artificial hearts in Europe early 2015.

Then

Carmat hopefully fund gradually most of its development in Europe first, then the United States, provides Philippe Pouletty. If all goes well. The investor is not less a businessman. It will resolve to sell if too many administrative and financial constraints were to hinder the development of Carmat. The company has lost tens of millions of euros since its inception including 17.2 million for 2012 alone. That said, Philippe Pouletty has no desire to let go of this exemplary innovation. Alain Carpentier less. For his part, Professor of Medicine already dreaming of a tricolor manufactures artificial hearts … And Carmat could become a hope for some 100,000 patients waiting for a transplant in the major Western countries.