All systems go

Read more Alumnus startup Vena Medical earns Health Canada approval for device to treat stroke victims By Brian Caldwell Faculty of Engineering Perseverance is paying off for two Waterloo Engineering graduates who co-founded an ambitious medical hardware company. Five years after launching Vena Medical to commercialize their fourth-year design project, Michael Phillips and Phil Cooper announced their first government approval this week for a device to remove blood clots from the brains of stroke patients.  "We couldn't be more excited that our first regulatory success is right here in Canada, and this means the first patients in the world to benefit from our technology are going to be Canadian," Phillips, the chief executive officer, said in a media release. Phillips and Cooper were classmates in the mechanical engineering program when they were inspired at an on-campus talk by celebrated alumnus and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya to tackle the much harder of two ideas they had for their Capstone Design project. Six months later, working out of the Velocity incubator at the University of Waterloo, they won $50,000 in backing from Palihapitiya and his former wife, Brigette Lau, also a Waterloo alumnus, to pursue commercialization after graduation in 2017. "We have a long way to go, but we're still excited about it," Cooper said at the time. in Kitchener, Vena celebrated a key milestone this week after earning Health Canada approval for a device that combines a balloon guide catheter and a distal access catheter used in thrombectomy to remove blood clots in the brain.