OneVentures and BiVACOR

BiVACOR’s artifical heart could help change the lives of thousands of people around the world living with heart failure.

Overview

  • OneVentures is a Venture Capital partner in the Australian Government’s Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF).
  • BiVACOR, founded in 2008, is a medical device company developing the Total Artificial Heart (TAH) to provide long-term full cardiac support for people with severe heart failure.
  • Support from OneVentures through the BTF has enabled BiVACOR to progress through the extensive technical, scientific and regulatory processes required to bring a biomedical innovation into clinical use.

About OneVentures

OneVentures is a leading Australian venture capital firm focused on scaling technology and healthcare companies through growth equity and credit. Founded in 2010 with $40 million under management, it now has over $900 million under management. The firm’s $170 million Healthcare Fund III, launched in 2016, is one of 3 private sector partners in the BTF.

BiVACOR and the Total Artificial Heart (TAH)

BiVACOR grew out of a PhD graduate project of its founder, Daniel Timms, in the early 2000s. Driven by the desire to help people like his father, who died at the age of 55 from heart failure, Timms founded the company in 2008 to develop what has become the TAH.

The TAH is the first long-term therapy for patients with severe biventricular heart failure. It uses a unique combination of magnetic levitation technology and artificial intelligence to replicate the natural pumping of a healthy heart.

Our vision is to create a device that is as good as a transplant or better. We’re looking to create a device that can bridge the gap between the number of donor transplants needed and the number of patients who could benefit from that therapy.
— Daniel Timms, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, BiVACOR

In November 2023 BiVACOR received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, the key regulator, to implant the TAH into a small number of patients. In February 2024 the Australian Government announced a $50 million Medical Research Future Fund non-dilutive grant (awarded through open and competitive processes) to develop and commercialise the device.

How investment from OneVentures has helped

In 2018, OneVentures was the first venture capital investor in BiVACOR, then an early-stage medical company working on a device that had tremendous potential but a long path to commercialisation.

It’s a very long timeline from the lab bench discovery through to a commercial product – at least 15 years. So you need to be patient and persistent. But the successes, when they happen, are tremendous and can impact healthcare provision globally.
— Dr Paul Kelly, Founding Partner and Director, OneVentures

It was clear that BiVACOR’s artificial heart was an extraordinary technology whose application could solve a real-life, real-world problem: end-stage heart failure, a debilitating condition that is the most common cause of death worldwide. Currently the only viable treatment is a heart transplant, and this is available to only a very small proportion of heart failure patients.

OneVentures supports biomedical startups by providing not only venture capital at a critical stage but also expertise in research commercialisation and experience in global markets.

'OneVentures is very unique as a venture capital investor. They were able to give us the confidence, with the BTF, to go out and change the world, ultimately, with this device.' – Daniel Timms

Biomedical Translation Fund

Through the BTF program, the Australian Government is a 50% investor in OneVentures Healthcare Fund III. This made it feasible for OneVentures to invest in BiVACOR at an early stage, providing capital at a critical point when BiVACOR needed it to take the TAH project to the next level.

Medical device companies are very risky. Having government support changed the risk level of venture capital investment.
— Daniel Timms, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, BiVACOR

The contribution of the BTF program in advancing biomedical innovation goes beyond funding ideas that, as Timms puts it, ‘otherwise would be lost to the world’. It also brings Australian startups into contact with networks of support for commercialisation in global markets.Two years ago, OneVentures secured additional venture funding for BiVACOR from a major US venture capital firm, which has put the company on a strong footing.

These companies need long-term patient funding, and a lot of it. If the BTF didn’t exist, the number of opportunities funded in Australia would be significantly less, and companies like BiVACOR may not even exist.
— Dr Paul Kelly, Founding Partner and Director, OneVentures
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