PI Harvey Borovetz
Co-Investigators William Wagner, Marina Kameneva, Steve Webber, Peter Wearden
Title Pumps for Kids, Infants and Neonates (PumpKIN) Preclinical
Program: The PediaFlow™ Pediatric VAD
Description For the past five years our consortium, consisting of the University of Pittsburgh and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, LaunchPoint Technologies and WorldHeart Inc., has undertaken an ambitious program to develop a pediatric blood pump, motivated by the critical need to treat infants and toddlers with congenital and acquired heart diseases. We have relied on first principles to develop, de-novo, a miniature blood pump specifically intended for this population. The first phase of this program has produced the PediaFlow™ PF3, believed to be the world’s smallest magnetically levitated (maglev) blood pump.
With a flow rate range between 0.3 -1.5 LPM and a footprint approximating a AA cell battery, the clinical PediaFlow VAD will provide circulatory support for neonates, infants, and children less than 20 kg who experience cardiac failure and circulatory collapse due to congenital and acquired cardiovascular disease. Our consortium is uniquely poised to carry this forward to clinical use, fulfilling the needs of the PumpKIN program. The individual and collective strengths of our individual organizations and our unique and close collaborations over decades have resulted in innovative implantable blood pumps introduced to clinical use and trials following regulatory approvals.
Successful completion of these aims will produce a pediatric ventricular assist device that will provide new opportunities for pediatric cardiac therapy and especially for the very smallest patients. Our very successful work for the past five years under the NHLBI Pediatric Circulatory Support Program (N01-HV-48192) serves as the basis for our current PumpKIN RFP application.
Source National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH
Term 4 years
Amount: $3,139,513 (year 2 funding)