Jim Corbett Wants to Keep You Out of Surgery

So in cardiovascular devices, ev3 will try to seize on emerging therapies where it could still get out ahead of bigger competitors. In neuro- and peripheral vascular devices, though, it aims to be a market leader overall.

To claim leadership, ev3 will rely on products like the Onyx Liquid Embolic System, produced by ev3 subsidiary Micro Therapeutics, based in Irvine, California. Onyx was already being sold in Europe when it got approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last July for use in the United States in treating arteriovenous malformations, or AVMs.

Corbett describes AVMs as a sort of “bird’s nest” in the brain—a tangle of abnormal connections between arteries and veins. Blood flow is imbalanced because of crossed signals; pressure can build and result in a hemorrhage. Major surgery used to be the only treatment, but with Onyx, treatment is less invasive and doctors can solve the problem “from the inside out,” Corbett explains. “The catheter goes into the center of the bird’s nest, and the [Onyx] polymer is injected and blocks the cross-communication.” Onyx is a liquid when it’s injected, but quickly turns to a solid that seals off the malformed vessels.

With endovascular procedures, “you have smaller holes, a shorter recovery time, and, in most cases, a better clinical outcome,” Corbett says. “Who wouldn’t choose this over surgery?”

In peripheral vascular treatments, the carotid arteries represent one of ev3’s biggest opportunities, according to Corbett. In the next couple of years, if you’re a patient who needs blockage cleared from these major arteries in the neck, products in the company’s pipeline will change your experience from “a surgical event, where you go in, you’re in the hospital for a couple days, and you’ve got to recover for a couple days . . . to a 20-minute procedure where you could go home the same day, but they’ll probably keep you overnight—with a hole in your leg instead of an incision from your ear to your clavicle,” he says.

Peripheral arterial disease, especially a lack of blood flow to the legs, is another area where Corbett anticipates growth, because of an aging baby boomer generation combined with an increased incidence of diabetes, which compromises the circulatory system. Amputation can result, but peripheral arterial stents like ev3’s have the potential to save patients’ limbs.

To build a pipeline of products that could fulfill the company’s “brain-to-big-toe” endovascular strategy, ev3 did a roll-up, buying half a dozen device makers between 2000 and 2002, and making investments in several others. (Acquisitions included locally based Microvena and IntraTherapeutics.) About $400 million of the funding ev3 raised from New York–based Warburg Pincus and the New Jersey–based Vertical Group went into acquiring technology platforms. Then, Corbett says, the challenge was to have an R&D team that could take those early products from merely functional to saleable.