President visits Romanian student team that created small artificial heart

Romanian president Nicușor Dan visited a team of researchers and students from ‘Grigore T. Popa’ University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iași, the creators of the smallest artificial heart with applications for both adults and children, on Saturday, October 25.

In 2023, UMF “Grigore Popa” announced that the Mavis Artificial Heart team from the higher education institution in Iași won the “Award for the Most Advanced Artificial Heart” in the grand final of the “Heart Hackathon” competition (the world’s first student competition for developing an artificial heart), which took place on October 29 in Dallas.

After the event, the team managed to get sponsors and establish contacts for continuing product development.

The UMF Iași team won the same award again in 2024, for the second consecutive year, in the final of the world competition, which this time took place in Japan. This time, the students from Iași, coordinated by Dr. Alexandru Pleşoianu, designed the smallest artificial heart in the world that can also be implanted in a newborn, controlled via a mobile phone.

“The smallest fully implantable artificial heart, with applications for both adults and children, is a project developed by a group of researchers and students from Iași with whom I spoke yesterday. I was impressed by this project with huge potential,” Nicușor Dan said.

According to the head of state, the prototype is in an advanced stage of laboratory testing, and animal preclinical trials are planned in the next 12 months.

“If these stages are completed, Romania will become the first country in Eastern Europe capable of developing and validating its own fully implantable mechanical circulatory support technology,” the president said on his Facebook page.

The head of state believes that the opportunity offered by these projects represents “new solutions” for patients with advanced heart failure who are on transplant waiting lists, as well as “the formation of a new generation of specialists in biomedical engineering who can deepen Romania’s integration into the European advanced research ecosystem.”

“I conveyed to the MAVIS Artificial Heart team my admiration and full support. We are in great need of students, researchers, and mentors like them,” Nicușor Dan concluded.

(Photo source: Nicușor Dan on Facebook)