StarTric's EIC Accelerator Puts a Surgeon's Stitch in a Catheter

When the tricuspid valve stops closing properly, blood leaks back into the right atrium with every heartbeat, and the right side of the heart slowly fails. Close to 3 million people in Europe live with tricuspid regurgitation, StarTric says, and the operation that reliably repairs it, open-heart surgery, is tolerable for only about 3% of them, because most patients are in their seventies or eighties and too frail. The company, based in Milan, is building TriClover, a transcatheter edge-to-edge repair device that reproduces the surgical Clover technique through a catheter in the groin.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project at its October 2024 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €2,499,999 from July 2025 to June 2028, for development, clinical trials, regulatory approval and commercial work. Three years is longer than most awards from this cut-off, which matches how far there is to go: the company still describes itself as preclinical.

The surgeons who invented the operation

StarTric's claim to credibility is its founders. Ottavio Alfieri devised the mitral edge-to-edge repair known as the Alfieri stitch, the technique that, StarTric says, the widely used mitral clip devices later copied, and with Michele De Bonis he developed the Clover for the tricuspid valve. De Bonis heads cardiac surgery at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and sits on the European guidelines task force for valvular heart disease. "Today, we have the opportunity to replicate a surgical technique of our own invention using transcatheter technology," Alfieri says on the company's site, adding that the field is "operating in the absence of highly effective transcatheter alternatives".

The commercial team around them is medtech-standard: a CEO with 30 years of device experience and an INSEAD MBA, a CTO who has industrialised cardiovascular devices, a regulatory lead with 20 years of approvals. Azeem Latib of Montefiore-Einstein in New York and Maurizio Taramasso advise on clinical validation.

Why a clover and not a clip

First-generation transcatheter repair devices were designed for the mitral valve and adapted to the tricuspid, and the company's argument is that this limits which anatomies they can treat: their efficacy, durability and indication remain restricted. Transcatheter valve replacement, it says, is a last resort with high adverse event risk and lifelong anticoagulation. TriClover is pitched as adaptable to most anatomies regardless of leaflet number and tethering, using a single device and a standardised sequence, with the surgical approach behind it backed by up to 25 years of clinical practice.

The mortality figure the company leads with is sourced: more than half of patients diagnosed with severe tricuspid regurgitation die within five years, citing a 2019 paper in Circulation on excess mortality from functional tricuspid regurgitation in heart failure.

1. Device design finalisedIn progressThe 2024 seed round was to finalise the design.
2. Investigational device producedNot confirmedNamed as the next step after the seed round.
3. First-in-human trialNot startedCompany still describes itself as preclinical in 2026.
4. Regulatory approvalToo earlyTriClover is not available for clinical use.

Little disclosed funding behind a big ambition

StarTric's disclosed money is thin for a company planning cardiac device trials. The seed round announced in July 2024, with the Amsterdam venture builder NLC's Health Impact Fund, Growth Engine and business angels, was not quantified, as Silicon Canals reported, and the EIC grant of €2.5 million is the largest confirmed sum. The award was blended finance and no EIC Fund equity investment has been announced. The company's registered share capital is €68,394.57, and its accounts were not obtained for this article.

An Italian answer to an American device market

Structural heart devices are dominated by large American manufacturers, and the tricuspid valve is the current frontier. What StarTric has that they do not is the authorship of the surgical technique it is copying, from the same Milan hospital tradition that produced the mitral edge-to-edge repair now sold worldwide. The EIC grant gives it three years to show that the technique survives the translation to a catheter, which is the step where device ideas usually fail.