Cleveland Clinic spinoff Cleveland HeartLab has completed a $3 million fundraising round, and named its executives and advisers.
Investors in the round included Glengary LLC, Second Generation Ltd. and Zapis Capital Group LLC, all in Northeast Ohio, according to a company release.
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Cleveland HeartLab is a clinical reference laboratory specializing in next-generation cardiovascular disease prevention, diagnosis and management. The company operates a CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited lab where it analyzes samples for markers of inflammation that put patients at increased risk for heart disease.
The company also is developing tests for inflammation biomarkers based on research licensed from the Cleveland Clinic.
“The proceeds will be used to do three things, primarily,” said Cleveland HeartLab president and chief executive Jake Orville. “First, expand our sales and marketing efforts, and our reach out of the region. Second, to build up our operations internally. And third is to continue to advance valuable Cleveland Clinic technology and get it into the market.”
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Cleveland HeartLab already has one U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved test that detects an enzyme called myeloperoxidase, or MPO, in the blood. Certain levels of MPO can identify people who are at risk for heart attack, stroke or death, said Dr. Stanley Hazen, the Cleveland Clinic staff physician whose research led to the test, called CardioMPO.
That test was commercialized by an earlier Clinic spinoff — Prognostix — which no longer exists, Orville said. While Cleveland HeartLab does the CardioMPO test at its lab as a service for clients, Prognostix tried to commercialize the test as a kit that clinicians could use themselves. The Prognostix model didn’t work, said Orville, who also was leader of that company.
Cleveland HeartLab, which has hired four people and expects to hire between 30 and 40 within the next two years, is working to develop a few other tests based on Clinic research, Orville said. “‘Develop’ means take the science from the Clinic, bring it into our lab, commercialize it and get it out to the market,” he said.
The company may be able to license even more Clinic research in the future. Three weeks ago, Hazen, who has been named Cleveland HeartLab’s chief scientific officer, and his colleagues were awarded a $9.2 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop a deeper understanding of the mechanisms linking inflammation to cardiovascular disease and its consequences.
Cleveland HeartLab also elected:
- Chairman — Les C. Vinney, retired president and chief executive of STERIS Corp. in Mentor, Ohio; has more than 35 years of general, operations and financial management experience
- President and CEO: Orville, has held senior management positions with Third Wave Technologies Inc. and NextGen Sciences; has more than a decade of medical device, diagnostics and life science management experience
- Chief medical officer — Dr. Marc Penn, staff cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic’s section of clinical cardiology, its Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and its Heart & Vascular Institute; director of the Clinic’s Bakken Heart-Brain Institute
- Chief scientific officer — Hazen, staff physician in the Clinic’s Department of Cell Biology, and the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine; head of the Section for Preventive Cardiology and Rehabilitation and director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention
The company named to its medical advisory board:
- Dr. William C. Popik, a practicing physician and senior health care executive developing clinical programs to improve quality and reduce costs, who most recently served as chief medical officer of LifeMasters Inc., a disease management company in South San Francisco, Calif.
- Dr. Michael C. Fiore, a general internist and preventive medicine specialist who treats patients for tobacco dependence; a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
- Melissa A. Ohlson, a registered and licensed dietitian who has served as nutrition projects coordinator for preventive cardiology and rehabilitation at the Clinic’s Heart & Vascular Institute, and as a nutrition consultant to hospitals, school districts and businesses
