VasoStitch Appoints David W. J. Smith as CEO

DANVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

VasoStitch, a start-up medical technology company, announced today the appointment of David W. J. Smith as President and Chief Executive Officer.

Prior to being recruited to VasoStitch, David was a Director and President and CEO of Tenaxis Medical since October 2004, where he led Series A, B and C fundraising efforts from business start-up phase, raising over $25 million in private equity from a wide range of investors. He also was responsible for driving the company's product development from inception through market introduction. Prior to Tenaxis, David was Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Curon Medical, where he led the Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Reimbursement & Clinical Functions, managing a direct team of 14 sales representatives and 37 indirect representatives. Earlier in his professional career, David served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Cohesion Technologies, where he launched a surgical sealant to vascular surgeons and increased sales by 400% in four quarters; and was an early employee at UK-based Biocompatibles, where he became General Manager of the company's cardiology business.

“David Smith has extensive commercialization experience with new medical technologies and is very skilled at raising private equity for biomedical products,” said Amir Belson, MD, Founder and Chairman of VasoStitch. Dr. Belson previously founded Neoguide Systems, a company that developed platform technology for minimally invasive surgical procedures and was acquired by Intuitive Surgical in 2009, and more recently has founded Emboline, Vascular Pathways and ZipLine Medical.

“VasoStitch has developed two platform technologies designed to access and close percutaneous therapy sites without the need for open surgery, thus likely to make catheter-based cardiac and vascular interventions simpler and more popular,” said David Smith. “I am very excited about helping make VasoStitch a great success.”

About VasoStitch

VasoStitch is an emerging medical device company that is developing nonsurgical transfemoral and transapical access-and-closure systems to facilitate deployment of large diameter transcatheter therapeutic devices—designed to reduce procedural complexity and eliminate need for an “open” surgical procedure.