On May 6, Venus Medtech (Hangzhou) Inc. ("Venus Medtech", 2500.HK), China’s leading provider of integrated solutions for transcatheter valvular heart disease treatment, announced its investment in Valgen Medtech, an innovative medical device company. With such investment, the company will strengthen its mitral valve repair and tricuspid valve repair product pipelines, and further improve its strategic layout in structural heart disease treatment.

Valgen Medtech was founded in 2015 by Dinova Medical Group. The company specializes in the development of mitral and tricuspid valve treatment technologies, especially systemic solutions for mitral regurgitation and tricuspid regurgitation.

Mitral valve regurgitation is the most common valve disease worldwide. China is estimated to have more than 10 million people with moderate to severe mitral regurgitation. Patients suffering severe regurgitation and requiring medical intervention amount to several million, half of whom are unsuitable for cardiac surgery due to advanced age or poor cardiac function accompanied by organ dysfunction, or other reasons, and are thus unable to receive effective treatment. In recent years, as interventional devices continue to be improved and clinicians gain more experience, transcatheter mitral valve intervention technology has developed rapidly.

As a leading company in this field, Valgen Medtech developed MitralStitch^®, China’s first transapical intervention device for mitral regurgitation; DragonFly-M^™, the first transfemoral mitral valve repair device; and DragonFly-T^™, the first transfemoral tricuspid valve repair device. Mitralstitch^® and DragonFly-M^™ have entered pre-marketing registered clinical trials, and DragonFly-T^™ has entered the stage of exploratory clinical study. In particular, the DragonFly^™ Transcatheter Mitral Valve Clip System fills the gap in transfemoral mitral valve treatment devices in China, putting Chinese players on the same level as top international brands in the R&D of interventional mitral valve devices.

The investment will advance the clinical studies and development progress of Valgen’s ongoing products, hopefully bringing them to the Chinese market as first-in-class medical devices. At present, Venus Medtech has a TMVR product  in clinical preparation stage and a TTVR product under development. The investment in Valgen Medtech will significantly improve Venus Medtech’s product layout in mitral and tricuspid valve disease treatment.

Eric Zi, Founder, Executive Director and General Manager of Venus Medtech said, "Valgen Medtech developed China's first interventional mitral valve treatment products via transapical and transfemoral approaches with excellent R&D capabilities. It is a leading enterprise in this field. This investment will enable Venus Medtech to further strengthen its product layout in structural heart disease and empower Valgen with its strong commercialization platform, creating sustainable synergy and extending more innovative options to doctors and patients in China and abroad."