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updated November 25, 2009

Rose-Hulman Ventures is Part of Indiana Collegiate Effort
Developing Heart Pump to Reduce Infant Deaths

Innovation continues at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's Rose-Hulman Ventures as students and project managers assist in the development of a revolutionary heart pump for infants that could reduce deaths in children born with only one functioning heart ventricle. The medical device was invented through a collaboration between an Indiana University cardiothoracic surgeon and a Purdue University engineer.

Collaborative Venture: Purdue University School of Engineering professor Steven Frankel displays an image related to the computational fluid dynamics modeling of the viscous impeller pump. Indiana University's Research and Technology Corp. recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with Rose-Hulman Ventures for development of a prototype of the pump. (Courtesy of Indiana University)

Dr. Mark Rodefeld, an associate professor of surgery and medical doctor at the IU School of Medicine, worked with mechanical engineering students Zach Gosnell and Jared West, and Rose-Hulman Ventures project manager Barry Davignon on the development of a viscous impeller pump. The device is an important component in the prototype of a cavopulmonary assist device that could reduce surgeries in affected children by two-thirds.

Single ventricle births are the leading cause of death among all structural birth defects in children during their first year of life. Only 50 to 70 percent of the infant patients survive the required three open heart surgeries -- called the Fontan procedures -- and the cost of the first few months of intensive care for an infant born with the defect is more than $1 million.

"This is by far the sickest group of children we care for at Riley Children's Hospital," Rodefeld said in an IU news release that announced the collaborative project. "To have an opportunity to potentially reduce the number of open-heart surgeries required in these children from three to one, and at the same time improve chances for a positive outcome, is a tremendous opportunity -- and is what drives this collaborative effort. Support from our universities is also critical because the market incentive to develop this device, as is the case for most pediatric medical devices, is not very appealing to the commercial sector."

Valuable Experience: Mechanical engineering students Zach Gosnell (top) and Nathan Wendt work on a project at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's Rose-Hulman Ventures, which successfully leverages the unmet technological needs and engineering challenges of companies as an innovative way to educate engineering undergraduate students. Gosnell is one of the Rose-Hulman students helping to develop the heart pump project.

The viscous impeller pump (VIP pump), was invented by Rodefeld and Steven Frankel, a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue.

The pump would be implanted into a four-way intersection of the body's two main veins, the superior and inferior vena cave, and the pulmonary arteries. The device, using a spinning disc, would pull blood from the veins and push it into the arteries. Implanted with the use of a catheter and powered by a magnetic coupling, the pump is unique for its multi-directional flow capabilities. The spinning disk has a working diameter of 18 millimeters and a required collapsed diameter of 3 millimeters.

Rose-Hulman Ventures was able to show Dr. Rodefeld, through laboratory experiments using glass tubing, that a solid spinning disk is capable of producing the desired flow rates. Rose-hulman's collapsible prototype achieved a speed of 5,000 RPMs.


Barry Davignon Project Manager Rose-Hulman Ventures	Dr. Mark Rodefeld Associate Professor of Surgery and Medical Doctor at the IU School of Medicine (IU Photo)

"IU and Purdue are developing a new class of percutaneous expandable rotary blood pumps with the initial target application to patients with single-ventricular congenital heart disease, and we are pleased to be continuing the all-Hoosier theme by collaborating with Rose-Hulman on prototype development of this new class of blood pumps," said Frankel in the news release. "The prototypes are invaluable for testing both in flow loops and for validating computational fluid dynamics models used at Purdue."

Rose-Hulman Ventures is continuing to develop a prototype collapsible disc in order to demonstrate the feasibility of insertion and removal of the disk via a catheter and will also provide two-dimensional drawings and solid models of the finished prototype designs.

"That should enable us to pursue additional prototypes from commercial fabricators," said Tony Armstrong, president and chief executive officer of Indiana University's Research and Technology Corp. "Although many years of effort have been invested into this problem by both inventors, a breakthrough in August 2008 finally yielded a novel design that solved a number of critical functional issues. The innovation resulting from this strong collaborative effort is being commercialized by both universities in that same spirit of cooperation."

Rose-Hulman Ventures successfully leverages the unmet technological needs and engineering challenges of companies as an innovative way to educate engineering undergraduate students. The project-based program offers student interns professional practice experience and forward-thinking necessary to distinguish them in a competitive engineering market upon graduation. Find out more at http://www.rhventures.org.