Reva revives

Dissolving drug-eluting stents were one of those devices that sounded like a great idea, but which in practice didn’t really take off. Abbott withdrew the best-known one, Absorb, in 2017 after it failed to sell, and when Reva Medical went into bankruptcy protection in early 2020 the technology was largely regarded as defunct. But it takes more than that to keep Reva down, it seems: the company is back with a $45m series B round and a new bioresorbable device for a different indication. Where formerly it was trying to treat blocked coronary arteries with a scaffold called Fantom, it is now heading to pivotal trials in below-the-knee peripheral vascular disease with a scaffold called Motiv. Motiv is made of a polymer called Tyrocore that Motiv developed itself, and leaches the antiproliferative sirolimus. Reva believes that the new cash, from “a global strategic investor with deep experience in medical devices”, as well as Biostar Capital and existing investors, will allow it to take Motiv to the FDA. Data from an uncontrolled pilot trial were encouraging, but the pivotal, versus balloon angioplasty, will be a far harder test.