NEWS
BioControl Forms Scientific Advisory Board with World Experts in Cardiology
BioControl Names Dr. Paul Hauptman as the Company’s New Medical Director
Yehud, Israel, June 21, 2007 --- BioControl Ltd., developer of advanced implantable devices for the treatment of autonomic disorders, announced today the composition of its Scientific Advisory Board. The six prestigious members who will advise the company on its scientific direction and clinical research initiatives are Professors William C. Little, Brian Olshansky, Milton Packer, Hani N. Sabbah, Peter Schwartz, and Karl Swedberg.
Dr. William C. Little is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Cardiology Section at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. He serves on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) sub-specialty board on cardiovascular disease and is a recognized leader in research on diastolic heart failure.
Dr. Brian Olshansky is a tenured Professor of Medicine and internationally known electrophysiologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals where he directed the Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology and the Fellowship Training Program for six years. Dr. Olshansky has been recognized globally for his expertise in the evaluation of syncope, the assessment of arrhythmia mechanisms, autonomic control of arrhythmias, multi-center randomized clinical arrhythmia trials, and the treatment of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias using device, ablation and drug therapy. He was the principal investigator of the largest randomized controlled clinical trial of implantable defibrillators. He is a member of eight editorial boards including the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology. He has lectured internationally and has been a visiting professor at institutions throughout the world.
Dr. Milton Packer is a Professor and a Gayle and Paul Stoffel Distinguished Chair in Cardiology and a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas. He is a founding member and prior president of the Heart Failure Society of America. Professor Packer has served regularly as a consultant for the Food and Drug Administration as well as a member, principal investigator and/or the chairman of many landmark international multi-center trials. He is on the editorial board of a long list of prestigious journals including the American Journal of Medicine and the European Journal of Heart Failure. Professor Packer is the recipient of numerous awards including the Henry Christian Award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the American Federation for Clinical Research in 1993. Most recently, he was awarded a Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, 2005-2010.
Dr. Hani N. Sabbah is a tenured Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Wayne State University in Detroit and the Director of Cardiovascular Research at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. He is also an adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and a Visiting Professor of Medicine at Columbia University in New York. Dr. Sabbah is recognized nationally and internationally for his basic and translational research in heart failure. He has extensive experience working with large animal models of heart failure focused on delineating mechanisms of myocardial disease and recovery and pre-clinical testing of new drugs and devices for the treatment of this disease syndrome. Dr. Sabbah also serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Heart Failure Reviews.
Dr. Peter J. Schwartz, Chairman of Cardiology at the University of Pavia, is a world leader in the field of the autonomic nervous system and sudden cardiac death. In 1969 he demonstrated the cardio-cardiac sympathetic reflex and later the arrhythmogenic role of left cardiac sympathetic nerves, provided the experimental and clinical evidence (ATRAMI, 1300 post-infarction patients among Europe, USA, Japan) that patients with reduced vagal reflexes are at higher risk for sudden death and that experimental vagal stimulation can prevent ventricular fibrillation, the background for vagal stimulation in man. Professor Schwartz served on the steering committees of international trials on sudden death, is on the editorial board of leading cardiovascular journals, and is the recipient of major awards: the "Paul Dudley White International Lecture" (AHA 1994); the “Michel Mirowski Award” (2001); the “NASPE Distinguished Scientist Award 2001”; and the Outstanding Achievement Award of ECAS (2007). He is the only European investigator funded by the N.I.H. for more than 30 years (1974-2012) and is currently the principal investigator of the European clinical study of BioControl’s CardioFit™ system for congestive heart failure.
Dr. Karl Swedberg, Professor of Medicine, Head of the Department of Emergency and Cardiovascular Medicine at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University, and senior physician in the Department of Medicine at Sahlgrenska University Hospital/Östra in Göteborg, Sweden was the first to report on the survival benefits of both ACE-inhibitors and beta-blockers in chronic heart failure. He has been a leading investigator, committee member and opinion leader in many international heart failure trials. He is the recipient of the Kaufman Award of Heart Failure Research 2004 from The Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, USA. He also received the Gold medal from the European Society of Cardiology in 2007. Since January 2005 he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Heart Failure, a leading Journal in this field.
BioControl also announced today that Dr. Paul Hauptman has joined the team as its new Medical Director. He is a Professor of Internal Medicine at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and director of heart failure in the Division of Cardiology. Formerly at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Dr. Hauptman has been involved in many international clinical trials, serves on multiple editorial boards and has an extensive research background in outcomes research.
BioControl develops and markets advanced implantable devices for the treatment of autonomic disorders, conditions whereby the autonomic nervous system ceases to function properly, resulting in a disruption to the control of involuntary body processes. The devices enable controlled electrical stimulation of various nerves to achieve therapeutic results. In April 2006, American Medical Systems exclusively licensed BioControl’s technology for its miniaturo™ system, to develop it as a treatment device for urge incontinence and interstitial cystitis. Funds secured from that transaction are being used to support the clinical development of the CardioFit™ system for the treatment of Congestive Heart Failure. For more information please visit www.biocontrol-medical.com. To schedule an appointment or an interview with CEO Dr. Ehud Cohen, please contact Marjie Hadad, media liaison, at +972-54-536-5220 or at marjie@biocontrol-medical.com.
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