Foundation Medical Partners Announces Promotion of John Sullivan to Principal and Appointment of Marc Gillinov as Clinical Partner
ROWAYTON, CT – October 1, 2008 – Foundation Medical Partners, a national healthcare technology venture capital investment firm, today announced that John Sullivan has been promoted to Principal. Mr. Sullivan joined Foundation's healthcare investment team in 2006 to assess and manage investments in the medical device, predictive medicine, and biopharmaceutical markets.
Mr. Sullivan is well known in the healthcare technology field. He led the development of the first coronary stent at Boston Scientific Corporation. Before joining Foundation, he helped start Molecular Staging Inc., a venture-funded biotechnology company spun out of the Yale School of Medicine that he joined as the first full-time employee and remained until the successful sale of the company to Qiagen, GmbH. Following this, he served as a consulting entrepreneur for a variety of early stage healthcare technology companies, with a particular emphasis on business strategy and product development. "In addition to his technical and engineering expertise, John brings both entrepreneurial and corporate experience that is very valuable to our business," said Andrew Firlik, General Partner of Foundation Medical Partners.
Foundation also recently appointed Marc Gillinov, MD as Clinical Partner. Dr. Gillinov is an internationally recognized cardiac surgeon and innovator. Dr. Gillinov holds the Judith Dion Pyle Chair in Heart Valve Innovation at Cleveland Clinic. He has extensive experience with the assessment and development of new medical device and cardiovascular therapies. He is a founder of Viacor, Inc, a venture-funded company developing percutaneous approaches to mitral valve repair. Dr. Gilinov also recently co-founded Clear Catheter Solutions, which focuses on development of new, more effective techniques for surgical drainage. He is also co-developer of the Cosgrove-Gillinov Clip, a novel medical device designed for open or minimally invasive occlusion of the left atrial appendage.
"Marc’s involvement with our team is very exciting and is of enormous value to our strategy. One of Foundation’s key strategic advantages in the venture capital business is our deep knowledge of the clinical relevance of the technologies in which we invest," said Andrew Firlik, "Marc is unique because he is highly influential within organized academic medicine but he also very involved with clinical and device innovation."
The investment team at Foundation Medical Partners includes general partners Andrew Firlik, Harry Rein, and Lee Wrubel. The firm actively manages over $200 million in venture capital targeted toward start-up and early-stage companies. Foundation has remained exclusively focused on the healthcare technology market since the firm was founded in 2001, with a current market capitalization of its healthcare investments totaling over $1.5 billion.
About Foundation Medical Partners
Foundation Medical Partners is an independent national venture capital investment firm formed in 2001 with the vision of bringing together cutting edge clinical expertise with deep company building experience. Foundation specializes in early stage venture capital for healthcare technology companies. Foundation was an early venture investor in AtriCure (NASDAQ: ATRC), CardioNet (NASDAQ: BEAT), CombinatoRx (NASDAQ: CRXX), and Northstar Neuroscience (NASDAQ: NSTR), as well as a portfolio of other firms, such as Coapt Systems, CardioNet, CardioMEMS, EndoGastric Solutions, Marinus Pharmaceuticals, NeuroVista, SetPoint Medical, and Spine Wave, Inc.
For press correspondence, please contact:
ANDREW D. FIRLIK, MD
General Partner
Foundation Medical Partners
105 Rowayton Avenue
Rowayton, CT 06853
telephone: 203.851.3913
fax: 203.831.8289
e-mail: afirlik@foundmed.com
www.foundmed.com
