Manny Villafaña, who helped found the medical device industry in the Twin Cities and around the world and continues to drive innovation as CEO of Medical 21, will be the afternoon keynote at our DeviceTalks Minnesota event on May 4.
Register for DeviceTalks Minnesota to hear from Villafaña — and other medtech leaders, including Abbott EVP and Medical Devices Group President Lisa Earnhardt, Solventum CCO Heather Knight, HistoSonics CEO Mike Blue, and more — at our one-day event at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center.
A founding father of medtech, Villafaña started companies that today make up a large chunk of the Minneapolis-St. Paul medtech hub. Over the decades, his companies included:
- CPI/Guidant, which Villafaña founded in 1972, developed the first lithium-powered pacemakers and defibrillators. Boston Scientific bought Guidant for $27 billion in 2006.
- Villafaña was the co-developer of the St. Jude heart valve, founding St. Jude Medical in 1976. The life-saving heart valves and their descendants have been implanted in more than 3 million people worldwide. Abbott acquired St. Jude Medical for $25 billion in 2017.
- Other Villafaña companies over the years included ATS Medical, which developed the next generation ATS heart valves. Medtronic acquired ATS for nearly $400 million in 2010.
AT Medical 21, Villafaña serves as CEO, leading a company developing an artificial artery designed to eliminate the need for blood vessel harvesting. Medical 21’s Maverics graft is a small, flexible tube encased in a nitinol scaffold. The technology could help reduce the systemic and painful challenges posed by traditional coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The Maverics graft could result in a much less invasive procedure…