Total votes: 11

Cash on hand July 2011 was approx. $6M (and 2 fund raising events had been announced in prep for NASDAQ listing)

Background:

Sunshine Heart, Inc (SHC) is a global medical device company, committed to the commercialisation of C-Pulse, an implantable, non-blood contacting, heart assist therapy for the treatment of people with moderate heart failure.

Heart Failure is a progressive condition in which the heart can not pump enough blood to the body’s other organs. It results from damage to the heart muscle typically arising from a heart attack or virus. C-Pulse™ (Sunshine Heart’s system) is designed to assist the heart to pump blood to the other organs and to the native heart muscle. As a therapy for advanced heart failure patients C-Pulse reduces the symptoms of heart failure through the use of counterpulsation technology which enables an increase in cardiac output, an increase in coronary blood flow and reduction in the heart’s pumping workload.

In January 2011 the company had implanted 18 of the target of 20 patients with the C-Pulse device as part of its FDA IDE trial. All the patients have shown improvement or maintenance of their conditions. Two of the patients, who were on the heart transplant waiting list, received a new heart. The C-Pulse successfully bridged them to transplant. The other three patients are doing well with their C-Pulse implants. The FDA has approved six centres to enrol patients and so far five of these have screened patients for the trial and three centres have successfully completed implants. The Company now wants to extend its implant program, and is planning additional sites in Australia and Canada. SHC has reimbursement approval for C-Pulse during the clinical trial. Payment has been received for several patients.

Upcoming Events:
 - 2011 September Completion of Phas I trial and results release

Similar Field or Competing Companies:
 - Bivacor
 - Thoratec
 - HeratWare

In disucssion on a similar company type (Thoratec) According to Rick Wise, a Leerink Swann analyst in New York: about 2,200 heart transplants are performed each year in the U.S., creating a market worth as much as $500 million. It is the larger market serving those too sick for transplants that may reach $2.5 billion, Wise wrote in a Nov. 5 investor note. The new data could help Thoratec achieve double-digit growth in sales and earning per share for the next three years, Wise wrote. HeartMate may help drive Thoratec’s sales to $542.3 million in 2012 from $313.6 million in 2008, a gain of 73 percent, he estimates.