ARTICLE SUMMARY:
A Pittsburgh-based start-up originating from a personal cause is making safer vascular grafts and heart valves for pediatric and adult indications.
While in residency, PECA Labs co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Arush Kalra, tended to focus on questioning surgical implant design and how they were implemented rather than focusing on surgical techniques, more interested in personalized patient care than following the status quo. Kalra’s boss took notice of this pattern and suggested he look into device design, where his style of thinking could take him far.
Motivated by his mother, who suffered from a congenital heart defect, Kalra took a leap of faith and left the residency to join a biomedical engineering program at Carnegie Mellon University, where he met future business partners Doug Bernstein and Jamie Quinterno. Along with Bernstein, who had a congenital issue himself, Kalra sought to develop a pediatric heart valve that resisted common complications, in the process creating a technology platform of cardiovascular solutions that PECA Labs was founded to develop, validate and commercialize.
