David M. Lederman was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

, entrepreneur, author, and humanitarian. He is noted for founding Abiomed, the company that developed

AbioCor AbioCor was a total artificial heart (TAH) developed by the Massachusetts-based company AbioMed. It was fully implantable within a patient, due to a combination of advances in miniaturization, biosensors, plastics and energy transfer. The AbioCor ...

, the first fully implantable artificial heart.

Biography

Lederman was born in Bogota,

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

to Israel Joseph Lederman and Rifka Lederman on May 26, 1944. His parents were immigrants who escaped the Nazis in Poland. He went to Colegio Americano and Universidad de Los Andes before his family moved to the United States in 1964. He completed his bachelor’s degree in engineering at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, where he also obtained his Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and Doctoral degree in Laser Physics and Aerospace Engineering.

Career

After graduation, Lederman went back to Colombia to work as an associate professor and director of the Universidad de Los Andes’ biomedical research department. In 1974, he relocated to the U.S. and worked for Avco Everett Research Laboratory. In this company, he was a senior research scientist working on cardiac assist technology. In 1979, he was appointed the chair of the company’s Medical Research Committee. Lederman led a team that worked on biotechnology that extended the lives of patients awaiting heart transplants. This produced a ventricular assist device (VAD) described as a sac-type assist machine called the AVCO LVAD. This would later become the ABIOMED BVS 5000. In 1981, he founded Applied Biomedical Corp. with the aim of developing the first artificial heart. The company went public in 1987. Lederman headed it as CEO until 2004, when he was replaced by Michael Minogue. During the early 2000s, Lederman headed the research team that developed AbioCor, a completely implantable pump. Although pulsatile, the device had no air compressor and was capable of recharging itself wirelessly and sending messages through the skin. Prior to this development, its predecessor - the

Jarvik-7 An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used as a bridge to heart transplantation, but ongoing research aims to develop a device that could permanently replace the heart when a transplant—whe ...

- was only partially implantable and required connections to external devices. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of AbioCor in 2009. Outside of medical experiments, this was the first time regulators allowed the mechanical replacement of hearts for human patients. In 2005, after 24 years as CEO of Abiomed, Lederman retired as president and chairman of the board. He published his research and gave lectures around the world. He was also known for his humanitarian activities. He funded, for instance, an initiative that supported Israeli children from Sderot while the town sustained a missile attack coming from the

Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...

. On August 15, 2012, he died of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

at his home in Marblehead,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. His death is said to have played a role in AbioMed’s decision to abandon the production and further development of AbioCor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lederman, David 1944 births 2012 deaths American inventors Cornell University alumni