HOUSTON (Oct. 13, 2023) — A young innovator at The Texas Heart Institute is taking up the mantle first carried by her world-renowned predecessor, Denton A. Cooley, MD, who implanted the first total artificial heart in a living patient in 1969.

More than 50 years later, Yaxin Wang, PhD, is reimagining cardiac transplantation for the youngest patients by helping to develop a pediatric left ventricular assist device (NeoVAD) to mechanically pump the hearts of infants and children born with heart defects.

As many as 14,000 children with congenital heart disease are hospitalized each year waiting for a new heart, but only around 500 pediatric transplants actually take place. The transformative work of Dr. Wang and her colleagues in the Institute’s Innovative Device & Engineering Applications (IDEA) Lab could both save and extend the lives of the youngest heart patients.

Read full story by Alice Levitt in Innovation Map.