A Welsh MedTech company is taking next steps towards launching its unique technology, after securing a partnership with a leading medical devices company.

Welsh MedTech company Ceryx Medical is working with Berlin-based Osypka Medical to develop a heart pacing device that it says will change the way patients with heart failure and other cardiac conditions are treated. Ceryx’s bionic device, Cysoni, takes pacemaking to a new level by pacing the heart with real-time modulation. Unlike traditional pacemakers, Cysoni prompts the heart to beat in line with the patient’s breathing. It means the device listens and responds to the body, rather than triggering the strict metronomic beats that current pacemakers do. The scientists behind this say there are huge advantages to this approach.

Ceryx’s CEO, Dr Stuart Plant, said: “It’s a huge breakthrough in the treatment of people with even the most serious heart conditions. Our studies show that Cysoni increases cardiac output by at least 20% when compared with monotonic pacing.”

The partnership will see Ceryx’s Cysoni device combined with Osypka Medical’s pacemaker for the purpose of in-human testing. This clinical study is scheduled to take place in the 3rd quarter of 2023 and will take Ceryx closer to commercialising its technology.

Dr Plant explained: “Osypka is a world leader in cardiac pacing technologies and is well-known for their innovation in the development and manufacturing of medical devices. It’s great that their team has shown such enthusiasm for our product. We’re hopeful that a longer-term partnership will emerge from this, which sees Cysoni becoming a standard part of pacemaking technology.”

Dr Markus Osypka, President and CEO of Osypka Medical said: “We believe in hemo-dynamically optimized pacing therapy. Ceryx’s Cysoni technology has the potential to become another quantum leap in pacing therapy very much like A-V synchronous pacing is today, but without placing the additional burden on the operator.”

Over the next few months, the teams at Ceryx and Osypka will work together to refine the device for clinical trials, which will take place in the UK and New Zealand. This will involve heart failure patients who have undergone a coronary artery bypass being fitted with this external device. These patients are usually paced for just a few hours after surgery, but the Ceryx team plans to extend this in order to build a full picture of Cysoni’s capabilities.

“All of our data so far points to Cysoni being capable of doing things no other pacing device has been able to do,” said Dr Plant. “It’s the result of ground-breaking research at the Universities of Bath and Bristol. The technology has also undergone five years of rigorous laboratory testing and pre-clinical evaluations as part of our collaboration with the University of Auckland in New Zealand. This next step, in partnership with Osypka, takes us within touching distance of making Cysoni available to the global healthcare community.”