Numerous innovative therapies that must be delivered into the heart wall are now under development. These therapies typically require precise placement of a precise measure of an injectable substance and are intended to be delivered by minimally invasive means to minimize patient trauma. Unfortunately, traditional approaches for delivering such therapies, such as intracoronary and endocardial catheters and flexible endoscopy, have proven insufficient. The HeartLander epicardial delivery system has shown great potential for addressing this issue in its research outcomes to date. This proposed effort will take the HeartLander research prototype and translate it to be appropriate for meeting clinical needs by providing it with needed functional and safety capabilities.
By developing the HeartLander epicardial delivery system to have the needed clinical and safety characteristics to allow a host of innovative therapies to be reliably injected into the heart wall with minimal invasiveness to the patient, a spectrum of vexing cardiac conditions will be treatable that are now not well handled.
