At the point when my younger sibling, who had built up skills in the field of medical devices, and I, who had been doing consulting at a Korean conglomerate, both felt our limits, the item my sibling in the United States had found and the role I would take on in Korea clicked, and in our mid-40s we, as a brother and sister, launched a startup together.
Chief Executive Min Ji-young of Enventric met with ChosunBiz at Enventric's headquarters in Guro-gu, Seoul, on the 4th and said, "We were siblings doing completely different work in Korea and the United States, but we started a company together, prompted by the potential of the vascular precision procedure medical device market and my younger sibling's on-site technical skills."
Cerebrovascular diseases such as cerebral infarction and cerebral hemorrhage occur when blood vessels become blocked or rupture. In emergencies, instead of a craniotomy that involves opening the skull, an "endovascular intervention" that inserts a slender tube (catheter) through the femoral artery to reach the brain vessels is widely used.
Currently, medical devices including cardiac and cerebrovascular catheters are effectively dominated by overseas corporations such as Johnson & Johnson MedTech (J&J MedTech), Medtronic and Abbott.
However, because brain vessels are extremely thin and highly tortuous, how softly and stably a catheter reaches the lesion determines the success rate and safety of a procedure. For this reason, the medical field has steadily called for new devices that address the limits of existing products. Noticing this, the Korean startup Enventric took on the challenge of localizing cerebrovascular interventional medical devices.
Enventric is a vascular medical device corporations founded in 2019 by siblings Chief Executive Min Ji-young and Chief Executive Min Seong-woo. The younger sibling, Chief Executive Min Seong-woo, majored in mechanical engineering at Stanford University in the United States and built a career in medical engineering by working for 15 years at J&J Medical and Abbott. Based on the core technology of cardiovascular catheters encountered in this process, he planned to enter the brain vessel market and proposed starting a business to his older sister, Chief Executive Min Ji-young, who at the time had been conducting process innovation (PI) consulting at LG for 20 years.
The two, with different areas of expertise, also divided roles clearly. Chief Executive Min Ji-young, as chief operating officer (COO) and chief financial officer (CFO), is responsible for organizational operations and the business structure, while Chief Executive Min Seong-woo, as chief technology officer (CTO) and chief marketing officer (CMO), is in charge of technology development and product strategy. A dual chief executive system dividing technology and management is Enventric's hallmark.
The Min siblings focused on the cerebrovascular disease market, smaller than the cardiovascular market but with treatment demand rapidly increasing due to aging. They determined that highly advanced brain vessel catheters could be developed based on existing cardiovascular catheter technology, and as a result succeeded in localizing cerebrovascular interventional devices that had relied on overseas products.
Enventric's core products are catheters designed to reach brain vessels safely and quickly, and a stent retriever that removes thrombi within brain vessels. The company developed EvoGlide, a specialized distal access catheter (DAC) that creates a path so that therapeutic devices inserted through the femoral artery during procedures for cerebral aneurysm or cerebral infarction can reach the lesion area stably, and received item approval from the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety last month.
EvoGlide has a thinner and softer tube than existing competing U.S. products and is designed to reach from the femoral artery to the brain vessels in an average of around 30 seconds. That is about twice as fast as other products.
Chief Executive Min Seong-woo said, "Medical staff have given positive evaluations to the fact that it was developed to advance smoothly along the vessels without blockage during procedures." Earlier in 2024, the company obtained approvals for the hemostatic valves "Superior" and "Flex," which reduce bleeding during vascular insertion, and is selling them along with EvoGlide.
Global corporations have rolled out cerebrovascular procedure medical devices one after another, but there were limits to fully meeting clinicians' needs. Clinicians want catheters that are as thin and soft as possible to enter the brain vessels quickly, and at the same time, when they reach a thrombus, to expand sufficiently to capture it firmly.
Chief Executive Min Seong-woo said these conflicting requirements were solved mechanically at the manufacturing process stage. He said, "Following EvoGlide, we developed 'Ultriva,' a stent retriever that removes thrombi within brain vessels," adding, "For patients with ischemic stroke caused by large-vessel occlusion, a mesh stent is deployed at the brain thrombus site through a tube inserted via the femoral artery to remove the thrombus." Ultriva is also currently undergoing the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety approval process.
Another feature is a design in which the marker attached to identify the thrombus location on X-ray images crumples easily so it does not snag while passing through vessels. The company said this improves both procedural accuracy and convenience.
The core technology underpinning these products is Enventric's proprietary platform "H-Flex 8." It combines a shape-memory alloy coil with a braiding structure and divides the catheter into eight sections, designing each section with different characteristics. Chief Executive Min Seong-woo explained, "It follows stably even in narrow, tortuous vessels while reducing kinking of the catheter during procedures, and by securing a wide inner lumen, we also improved procedural safety and efficiency."
Enventric plans to obtain approvals for four cerebrovascular treatment products within this year and roll them out to the market sequentially. Rather than stopping at individual product sales, its strategy is to bundle related product lines to build "system-level" competitiveness in domestic and overseas markets. It is also pursuing overseas expansion to the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, including Korea.
Based on this business potential, Enventric is also preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). Chief Executive Min Ji-young said, "We have completed the selection of the underwriter and are preparing for a technological evaluation," adding, "Our goal is to file a preliminary review with the exchange in the first half of next year."