Boston and New YorkBoston and NY

Half a Heart, a Full Life

Swissnex presents a lunch conversation with Maria Alexandra Cetățoiu, founder of CC Cardio, a Swiss medtech startup improving outcomes for patients with complex congenital heart disease.

Roughly five out of every 100,000 newborns is born with a single-ventricle physiology — a form of complex congenital heart disease (CHD) in which only one of the heart’s two lower chambers develops sufficiently to pump blood. Because this single ventricle must supply both the lungs and the rest of the body, circulation is inefficient and places significant strain on the cardiovascular system. Affecting a small but vulnerable population worldwide, people with single-ventricle hearts typically require multiple surgeries early in life and ongoing medical care, but even with treatment, many experience reduced physical capacity and long-term health challenges.

Maria Alexandra Cetățoiu, PhD candidate in Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano and a visiting researcher at  Boston Children’s Hospital, knows this from personal experience — she was born with a single-ventricle heart. To help improve outcomes for individuals with single-ventricle physiology and other forms of CHD, she founded the Swiss startup CC Cardio. Their product, UniFlow, is a minimally invasive, self-regulating heart pump that mimics the missing ventricle.  Using algorithms that adapt in real time to the heart’s rhythm, it offers continuous and intelligent physiological support, reducing complications and lastingly improving quality of life without resorting to invasive and temporary solutions — because being born with half a heart should equal living a full life.

Lunch will be provided.

Program

  • 12:00pm – Doors open
  • 12:30pm – Opening remarks
  • 12:35pm – Presentation
  • 1:00pm – Q&A
  • 1:30am – End
Add to Google calendar
iCal / Outlook

Event start time

  • Boston

    12:00PM

Speaker

  •

    Bio

    Maria Alexandra Cetățoiu

    Founder, CC Cardio
    Maria Alexandra Cetățoiu, ScM is a final-year PhD candidate in Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Her research, conducted in collaboration with the Cardio-Engineering team at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the BioCardioLab at Fondazione Monasterio, focuses on the development of advanced computational pipelines for the study, diagnosis, and treatment of complex congenital heart disease (CHD).
    As a CHD patient herself, born with a single-ventricle heart and having undergone Fontan palliation, she decided to dedicate her life and career to the treatment of complex CHDs, bringing a uniquely personal perspective to the advancement of dedicated therapies.
    Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a Master in Medical Sciences from Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. Her earlier research centered on computational fluid dynamics applied to the study and surgical planning of single-ventricle physiology, conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology and, subsequently, with the Cardioengineering Team at Boston Children’s Hospital.
    She is the co-founder of CC Cardio, a Swiss-based MedTech startup headquartered in Lugano, Ticino, recently awarded first prize at the Boldbrain Startup Challenge, and focused on the development of a circulatory support pump specifically designed for single-ventricle hearts.