MassDevice New Year’s Special | David Lucchino

David Lucchino
CEO, Semprus Biosciences

Prior to co-founding Semprus BioSciences in 2007, Lucchino was a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners. He co-founded and served as managing director of LaunchCyte, an investment firm that specializes in developing biomedical intellectual property. Lucchino earned an M.B.A. from the Mass. Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, an M.S. from Syracuse University and a B.A. from Denison University.

The phrase I would use is paradigm-shifting. Because, fundamentally, the relationship betweem the patient and the medical device he or she gets is changing and becoming even more intimate — and the expectations around the quality of care and the delivery of care for that particular device are only going up.

There’s going to be a continued understanding that there’s a new category being established — and Semprus is one of the companies that’s leading the way — if the old category was coatings, there’s a new yet-to-be named category of engineering beyond the device itself.

The folks at FDA have a tremendous amount of integrity and concern about getting great, safe and highly effective products to the market. It’s always important to remember what the FDA’s priorities are and how we can align the businesses we’re developing, in a balanced way, with those prioritues. And the 510(k) process is part of that balance, in terms of how the FDA reviews applications.

Our feeling at Semprus is, regardless of the healthcare regulations, the market was clearly moving to medical device manufacturers — which is a highly innovatinve industry, our industry should get credit for that — being able to really define where the value is in the product and how it benefits the patient. We as entrepreneurs in medical device companies need to always define where the value is and how are we helping the paitent. If you stay focused on that, you’ll more efficiently get to where you want to go.

If you look back at what interventional cardiology did in the 1980s, and the role that played, and then in invasive surgery which came on line in a meaningful way in the last decade, there are really two.

The industry is drawing in not only mechanical engineers, but biomedical engineers, and addressing questions and answering them a little differently than what the market has done already. Which gets to the idea we’re focused on, which is engineering beyond the device.

One area I continue to be very interested in is robotics, especially around specific surgeries and procedures, and the role that can play in helping to get to the best possible healthcare outcomes.