Why this Houston medical device innovator is pumped up for the first total artificial heart

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 248

Dr. William Cohn is the chief medical officer for BiVACOR, a medical device company creating the first total artificial heart. Photo via TMC

It's hard to understate the impact Dr. William Cohn has had on cardiovascular health as a surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute or on health care innovation as the director of the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center. However, his role as chief medical officer of BiVACOR might be his most significant contribution to health care yet.

The company's Total Artificial Heart is unlike any cardiovascular device that's existed, Cohn explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast. While most devices are used temporarily for patients awaiting a heart transplant, BiVACOR's TAH has the potential to be a permanent solution for the 200,000 patients who die of heart failure annually. Last year, only around 4,000 patients were able to receive heart transplants.

"Artificial hearts historically have had bladders that ejected and filled 144,000 times a day. They work great for temporary support, but no one is suggesting they are permanent devices," Cohn says on the show.

The difference with BiVACOR's device is it abandons the bladder approach. Cohn explains that as assist pumps evolved — something his colleague, Dr. Bud Frasier, had a huge impact on — they featured new turbine and rotor technology. Daniel Timms, BiVACOR's founder and CTO, iterated on this technology beginning when he was a postdoctoral student at Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

"BiVACOR is the first artificial heart that leverages what we learned from that whole period — it has no bladders, it has no valves. It has one moving part, and that moving part is suspended in an electromagnetic field controlled by a computer and changed thousands of times a second," Cohn says. "It will never wear out, and that's why we think it's the world's first total artificial heart."

The company is seeing momentum, celebrating its first successful human implantation last month. The device was used for eight days on a patient at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center before the patient received a heart transplant.

Cohn says that BiVACOR has plans to use the TAH as "bridge-to-transplant" device in several other surgeries and expects to get FDA approval for that purpose in the next three to four years before working toward clearance for total artificial heart transplants.

Cohn has worked to support medical device startups at CDI at TMC for the seven years it has existed — first under Johnson and Johnson and then under TMC when it took the program over. He describes the center and its location as the ideal place for developing the future of health care, with Houston rising up to compete with regions known for medical device success — both coasts and Minnesota.

"Being in the shadow of the largest medical center on the planet — 106,000 employees show up there every 24 hours," Cohn says, "if you want to innovate, this is the place to do it."

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A new innovation out of the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign Program is enhancing efficacy of a life-saving aortic aneurysm rupture procedure. Photo via Getty Images

Houston biodesign innovators ready to spin out startup with life-saving vascular tech

heartbreak healers

Yes, you can die of a broken heart — although it's not in the hyperbolic way you might be thinking. Fewer than 20 percent of people who have an aortic aneurysm rupture survive the event. But aortic aneurysms can be treated if they’re caught before they burst. A new Houston company is devoted to a novel solution to helping patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA).

That company is Taurus Vascular. As part of the current class of the TMC Innovation Biodesign Program, fellows Matthew Kuhn and Melanie Lowther were tasked with creating a biomedical company in a year. The founders started their journey last August. At the end of this month, they'll be kicked out of the nest, Kuhn tells InnovationMap. Taurus is also in Rice University's 2023 cohort of OwlSpark, an ongoing summer program for startups founders from the Rice community.

Kuhn is a biomedical engineer who just scored his forty-fifth patent. The CEO says that he hit it off quickly with his co-founder and COO, Lowther, former director entrepreneurship and innovation at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Matthew Kuhn and Melanie Lowther co-founded Taurus Vascular as TMC Biodesign fellows. Photos via taurusvascular.com

Members of the Biodesign Program are paid a livable stipend to devote themselves fully to creating a pioneering company. Kuhn says that he became interested in finding a more effective way to heal AAAs during his four and a half years as a project leader at the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center.

“It was ripe for innovation and we landed on a concept of some merit,” he says.

The current standard of care for AAAs is EVAR, or endovascular aneurysm repair, in which a surgeon inserts a stent to relieve pressure on the aneurysm.

“It used to be if you had a AAA, you had a gnarly procedure,” he says, which included a large incision across the abdomen. EVAR eliminated that, but its problem is that it often results in endoleaks. As many as 20 percent of patients need another EVAR within five years.

Taurus Vascular’s technology improves on EVAR by placing a self-deploying stent to create a drainage pathway between the high-pressure aneurysm sac and a low-pressure nearby vein — mitigating the adverse impact of endoleaks that would otherwise cause the aneurysm to continue to grow. The simple solution will allow patients to live longer, healthier lives after their procedure.

Kuhn says that being in Houston has been and will continue to be instrumental in his company’s success. Part of that, of course, is his relatively cosseted status as a founder in the Innovation Biodesign Program. But he says that the industry as a whole has become almost like a family.

“It feels very different from startup life for other industries where it feels competitive,” he explains. "You have to be a little crazy to start a medical device company and there’s a sense that we’re all in the same boat. People are so generous with their time to share resources. I feels like I have 100 co-founders."

Following the end of Taurus Vascular’s time in the program that helped conceived it, its founders will remain in the same building, continuing to work to support their technology. The next step is raising a seed round that will pay for the company’s chronic animal studies. Because Taurus Vascular is producing a Class III medical device, its approval process to get to market is the most stringent the FDA has.

The goal is to be commercial by 2030, says Kuhn. By then, Taurus Vascular will have healed many a heart.

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5 Houston scientists named winners of prestigious Hill Prizes 2026

prized research

Five Houston scientists were recognized for their "high-risk, high-reward ideas and innovations" by Lyda Hill Philanthropies and the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

The 2026 Hill Prizes provide seed funding to top Texas researchers. This year's prizes were given out in seven categories, including biological sciences, engineering, medicine, physical sciences, public health and technology, and the new artificial intelligence award.

Each recipient’s institution or organization will receive $500,000 in direct funding from Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The organization has also committed to giving at least $1 million in discretionary research funding on an ad hoc basis for highly-ranked applicants who were not selected as recipients.

“It is with great pride that I congratulate this year’s Hill Prizes recipients. Their pioneering spirit and unwavering dedication to innovation are addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time – from climate resilience and energy sustainability to medical breakthroughs and the future of artificial intelligence,” Lyda Hill, founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, said in a news release.

The 2026 Houston-area recipients include:

Biological Sciences: Susan M. Rosenberg, Baylor College of Medicine

Rosenberg and her team are developing ways to fight antibiotic resistance. The team will use the funding to screen a 14,000-compound drug library to identify additional candidates, study their mechanisms and test their ability to boost antibiotic effectiveness in animal models. The goal is to move toward clinical trials, beginning with veterans suffering from recurrent infections.

Medicine: Dr. Raghu Kalluri, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Kalluri is developing eye drops to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss globally. Kalluri will use the funding to accelerate studies and support testing for additional ocular conditions. He was also named to the National Academy of Inventors’ newest class of fellows last month.

Engineering: Naomi J. Halas, Rice University

Co-recipeints: Peter J. A. Nordlander and Hossein Robatjazi, Rice University

Halas and her team are working to advance light-driven technologies for sustainable ammonia synthesis. The team says it will use the funding to improve light-driven catalysts for converting nitrogen into ammonia, refine prototype reactors for practical deployment and partner with industry collaborators to advance larger-scale applications. Halas and Nordlander are co-founders of Syzygy Plasmonics, and Robatjazi serves as vice president of research for the company.

The other Texas-based recipients include:

  • Artificial Intelligence: Kristen Grauman, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Physical Sciences: Karen L. Wooley, Texas A&M University; Co-Recipient: Matthew Stone, Teysha Technologies
  • Public Health: Dr. Elizabeth C. Matsui, The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine
  • Technology: Kurt W. Swogger, Molecular Rebar Design LLC; Co-recipients: Clive Bosnyak, Molecular Rebar Design, and August Krupp, MR Rubber Business and Molecular Rebar Design LLC

Recipients will be recognized Feb. 2 during the TAMEST 2026 Annual Conference in San Antonio. They were determined by a committee of TAMEST members and endorsed by a committee of Texas Nobel and Breakthrough Prize Laureates and approved by the TAMEST Board of Directors.

“On behalf of TAMEST, we are honored to celebrate the 2026 Hill Prizes recipients. These outstanding innovators exemplify the excellence and ambition of Texas science and research,” Ganesh Thakur, TAMEST president and a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, added in the release. “Thanks to the visionary support of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, the Hill Prizes not only recognize transformative work but provide the resources to move bold ideas from the lab to life-changing solutions. We are proud to support their journeys and spotlight Texas as a global hub for scientific leadership.”

Investment bank opens new Houston office focused on energy sector

Investment bank Cohen & Co. Capital Markets has opened a Houston office to serve as the hub of its energy advisory business and has tapped investment banking veteran Rahul Jasuja as the office’s leader.

Jasuja joined Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, a subsidiary of financial services company Cohen & Co., as managing director, and head of energy and energy transition investment banking. Cohen’s capital markets arm closed $44 billion worth of deals last year.

Jasuja previously worked at energy-focused Houston investment bank Mast Capital Advisors, where he was managing director of investment banking. Before Mast Capital, Jasuja was director of energy investment banking in the Houston office of Wells Fargo Securities.

“Meeting rising [energy] demand will require disciplined capital allocation across traditional energy, sustainable fuels, and firm, dispatchable solutions such as nuclear and geothermal,” Jasuja said in a news release. “Houston remains the center of gravity where capital, operating expertise, and execution come together to make that transition investable.”

The Houston office will focus on four energy verticals:

  • Energy systems such as nuclear and geothermal
  • Energy supply chains
  • Energy-transition fuel and technology
  • Traditional energy
“We are making a committed investment in Houston because we believe the infrastructure powering AI, defense, and energy transition — from nuclear to rare-earth technology — represents the next secular cycle of value creation,” Jerry Serowik, head of Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, added in the release.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCaptialHTX.com.

MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

AI Oncology

Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

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