Selera Medical: Disrupting the heart failure treatment paradigm ❤️‍🔥

Selera is developing a device to treat fluid overload in heart failure patients with a one-time, minimally invasive procedure.

Backstory 📖

Hello! 👋 We (Stacie & Kevin) are engineers who met at Stanford Biodesign, where we shadowed clinical cases and identified unmet needs in hospitals across the Bay Area. We observed first-hand the limited and ineffective treatment options available to heart failure patients, which led to poor quality of life and frequent hospitalizations. With Kevin’s Ph.D. in bioengineering, Stacie’s medical device + ops/strategy industry experience, and a shared vision to improve healthcare outcomes, Selera was born.

Problem 💔

Over 6.5 million people in the US suffer from heart failure, which is when the heart can no longer pump blood efficiently to the rest of the body. As the disease progresses, symptoms get worse, quality of life tanks, and hospital time skyrockets. It’s terrible for patients and their loved ones, as well as a huge burden to the healthcare system.

Over 90% of symptoms and hospitalizations are driven by fluid buildup around the body (think: fluid in the lungs → patient can’t breathe → hospital). Standard of care medications to manage fluid hasn’t changed in over 60 years, have adverse side effects, require significant provider time, and become ineffective over time. As a result, patients are trapped in a cycle: fluid builds up, symptoms worsen, hospitalization, discharge, repeat. Post-hospitalization, the survival rate is similar to some stage 4 cancers – only 50% at 2 years – and reduces with each admission.

Approach 🎯

We are taking a brand new approach by harnessing the body’s own fluid management mechanisms to remove excess fluid, alleviate symptoms, and reduce hospitalizations.

With the heart not pumping blood as well as it should be, it causes backups in the blood vessels (like a highway when there’s construction). This forces fluid with important nutrients to leak out (detour) into the interstitial space, which is the space between organs and tissues. Normally, this fluid is collected and brought back to the bloodstream by the lymphatic system (a parallel highway with roads all over the body). However, the lymphatic system is overwhelmed by the extra fluid produced in heart failure due to the backups (when Maps reroutes everyone and the seemingly better alternative also has traffic). Without any other way out, fluid is trapped in the interstitial space, leading to the symptoms behind hospitalizations, such as swelling and chest pain depending on where the fluid is stuck. Our technology ‘untaps’ the fluid stuck in the interstitial space by offloading the lymphatic system so that it can work more efficiently (like opening up more lanes to reduce traffic).

With our one-time procedure, minimally invasive lymphatic offloading (MILO) provides long-term treatment and breaks the fluid overload hospitalization cycle for patients.

Connect 🤝

We’re looking to connect with cardiologists and interventional radiologists interested in partnering with us on product testing and future clinical trials.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’re working on or get involved, reach out to us at founders@seleramedical.com.