Toma brings clinical and research experience across the structural heart and interventional landscape to his new role with Jupiter Endovascular, the company said yesterday. He also serves as director of Interventional Cardiology for the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute, is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and leads the Chronic Total Occlusion Program at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital.
Toma has served as co-principal investigator for a clinical study of Jupiter Endovascular’s Vertex Thrombectomy System for pulmonary embolism, as well as for many other clinical trials in the interventional space, including pulmonary embolism systems and transcatheter heart valves. He has published extensively and holds several invention patents.
“Toma is a globally recognized physician, researcher and leader in interventional cardiovascular medicine,” CEO Carl J. St. Bernard said in a press release. “His experience treating patients with complex pulmonary vascular and structural heart disease, combined with his deep understanding of the clinical evidence required to advance new therapies, will be invaluable as we realize the potential of our TFX platform.”
“Jupiter Endovascular is addressing a long-standing challenge in cardiovascular intervention, which is balancing the competing needs of flexibility and stability in your catheters without creating cardiac distress in unstable patients,” Toma said in a press release. “I have seen the capabilities of the company’s TFX technology in the Vertex System that enables one catheter to change its state from flexible to fixed, and back again, firsthand in the SPIRARE II trial and am very encouraged about its potential to enable us to do more than we can today with current commercial technologies. I’m also energized by the company’s vision to look beyond clot removal to the restoration of patient hemodynamics and right-heart recovery with the intent to improve long-term prospects for PE patients.”
Jupiter Endovascular was spun out from Neptune Medical in 2024 and raised $21 million in seed funding, followed by over $40 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round.
Jupiter’s TFX platform brings stability and control to catheter interventions, the company says. It aims to enable interventionalists to treat anatomical sites usually not safely or easily accessible via conventional endovascular approaches.
The Vertex system, which incorporates Jupiter’s TFX platform, is delivered in a flexible, relaxed state over a guidewire to a target location in the vasculature. Pressurized with saline, it fixes in a stable position for intervention. Then, it returns to a relaxed state to navigate to another target location or for removal.
The Vertex Catheter received FDA 510(k) clearance in September 2025. The Vertex Pulmonary Embolectomy System remains investigational, having completed its SPIRARE II trial, which met its primary endpoints in May 2026.
