Inventor of BiVACORs Total Artificial Heart makes The Australian's Top 100
Dr Daniel Timms, a biomedical engineer from Brisbane, has landed on this years’ The Australian Top 100 Innovators List, for his Australian-designed BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart. The list names leading innovators in their fields, celebrating the ambition and commitment of the nation’s newest entrepreneurs.
BiVACOR is a clinical-stage medical device company developing the Total Artificial Heart (TAH), the first long-term solution for patients with severe heart failure.
The BiVACOR TAH could become the world’s first permanent artificial heart replacement after being developed by Dr Daniel Timms and his father Gary, who was dying of heart failure.
In a successful FDA-approved Early Feasibility Study trial conducted in Texas in early July, the 650g titanium pump was implanted for eight days in a patient. They have since gone on to complete numerous other trials, in one case keeping a young father alive for just short of a month before a donor heart became available.
The BiVACOR TAH promises to last longer than other artificial hearts because it uses a single spinning disc to push blood around the body. The disc is magnetically levitated within its chamber, minimising wear and tear. This design will revolutionise the heart failure field and see the delivery of a life-long alternative to organ donation.
BiVACOR has received $50m in funding from the Australian government this year, while the Medical Research Future Fund has backed a trial in Australian patients.
BiVACOR’s Research and Development arm is based in the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct. From there, they have been collaborating with Griffith University’s world-class Mechanobiology Research Laboratory which has been performing advanced laboratory testing on the total artificial heart.
“Coming back from the US, where we work very closely with the world-renowned Texas Heart Institute, to see the expansion of the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct made it really attractive for us to bring our technology back here to work with a world-leading laboratory at Griffith.”
DANIEL TIMMS, Founder and CTO, BiVACOR