CSE alumna wins Minnesota Cup for artery disease detection device
headshot of biomedical engineering alumna Marie Johnson
Inspired by her own personal tragedy, biomedical engineering alumna Marie Johnson and her team of researchers have developed a breakthrough device that identifies lethal coronary blockages in less than 20 seconds.

Contacts:

Jessica Snell, Haberman for Minnesota Cup, (612) 372-6452, jessica@modernstorytellers.com

Rhonda Zurn, College of Science and Engineering, rzurn@umn.edu, (612) 626-7959

Preston Smith, University News Services, smith@umn.edu, (612) 625-0552

AUM Cardiovascular will receive $50,000 in seed capital

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/09/11) – AUM Cardiovascular, a Northfield, Minn.-based start-up developing a non-invasive, handheld device that can detect coronary artery disease, will receive a total of $50,000 in seed capital as winner of Minnesota’s prestigious breakthrough business idea competition. AUM’s founder and CEO is Marie Johnson who received her master’s and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering. Johnson is also the former director of the University’s Medical Devices Center Innovation Fellows Program.

Inspired by her own personal tragedy, Johnson and her team of researchers have developed a breakthrough device that identifies lethal coronary blockages in less than 20 seconds. The AUM Cadence sensor could change the way healthcare screens for coronary artery disease, a condition that kills 350,000 Americans every year.

“I am grateful to receive this recognition and seed money from the Minnesota Cup,” Johnson said. “But our primary goal is to get our device on the market and save lives. That is my singular pursuit: I want to reduce the number of widows and little kids that don’t have their dads.”

In 2002, Johnson, a biomedical engineer and then-Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, was working with 3M scientists to develop an automated diagnostic system for detecting heart murmurs when her husband died suddenly at age 41. Considered in “perfect condition,” his cause of death came as a complete shock to Johnson: a heart attack. Johnson soon found out coronary artery disease, the kind diagnosed in her husband, is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States, according to the American Heart Association.

Her husband’s untimely death moved her to apply the principles of the heart murmur detection system to create an acoustic device that can identify symptoms of coronary artery disease. Johnson said that sound rarely is audible because it is masked by many other noises.

“It’s always there. It’s just a matter of being able to extract it,” she noted.

To test and prepare her device for market, Johnson must conduct multi-center clinical trials. She estimates she will need about $3 million to accomplish that goal— $2 million to finance the cost of conducting multi-center trials and $1 million to prepare clinical trial-ready products. The skills and seed money Johnson and her team gained though AUM Cardiovascular’s Minnesota Cup experience will help achieve the next level of success.

“We were thrilled with the quality of the final presentations. We had several very strong contenders for the grand prize,” said Litman. “At the end of the day, considering the potential not just for economic return, but to make a huge impact on the world, we were won over by AUM Cardiovascular.”

For more information and a complete list of 2011 Minnesota Cup semi-finalists, finalists and division winners, visit www.MinnesotaCup.org.

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