Mount Laurel heart failure device company Impulse Dynamics raises $80M Series D

Mount Laurel-based Impulse Dynamics, makers of a device that treats chronic heart failure, announced an $80 million Series D fundraising round this week.

The 20-year-old company recently got FDA approval for two iterations of the Optimizer Smart System, an implantable device that strengthens the heart and helps it beat more forcibly, Christopher Baer, the company’s VP of commercial operations, told Technical.ly.

The round of funding will go toward commercializing the device, with a special focus on doing so in the United States. The company has about 100 employees in offices across the globe, and about 15 in its Mount Laurel office, with plans to grow soon.

“This development brings encouraging news to the vast number of heart failure patients in the U.S. and around the world who suffer poor quality of life and have run out of viable options to treat their disease,” Impulse Dynamics CEO Simos Kedikoglou said in a statement.

The device uses cardiac contractility modulation, or CCM therapy, to decrease symptoms of heart failure and improve quality of life for Class III heart patients. To date, it’s been implanted in more than 4,000 patients around the world.

“It makes their heart beat more forcibly so they can do more, walk a little faster, a little further and have a little better quality of life,” Baer said. “Essentially it makes the heart pump more efficiently.”

The device has been through multiple clinical trials and studies and received FDA approval in March, and then October on another iteration. The approval sped the fundraising along, Baer said.

Of the $80 million, Kennedy Lewis Investment Management invested a total of $25 million of debt and equity in the company.

“With CCM, Impulse Dynamics has developed a very important new therapy for a large and growing patient population who until now have had no real treatment alternatives,” said Rich Gumer, Kennedy Lewis’ managing director, in a statement. “Our additional investment will help the company deliver a positive impact on a much larger scale — improving patient outcomes and generating significant savings to the healthcare system.”

Although it’s across state lines in New Jersey, a half-hour drive away, Baer said Impulse and its engineers “undoubtedly” feel like a part of Philly’s tech community. Many of them live in Philadelphia or surrounding suburbs, and work with area institutions such as Temple University Hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania or Jefferson University Hospital.

And as Impulse further develops the Optimizer device, Baer said the company expects to do a bunch of hiring in 2020, with most openings in highly technical sales roles. Check out some current openings here.