SHAPE, The Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication, met with an international contingent of leading cardiologists and researchers to mark a decade of progress and determine the way forward. The SHAPE Trial Advisory Meeting took place Aug. 21-23, 2015, in Los Angeles.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it is establishing an advisory committee focused on patient engagement. The Patient Engagement Advisory Committee will provide advice on complex issues relating to medical devices, the regulation of devices and their use by patients to the FDA Commissioner.

CeloNova BioSciences Inc. announced that it has received conditional approval to start an investigational device exemption (IDE) trial to study the Cobra PzF coronary stent system in patients at high risk of bleeding.

Hansen Medical Inc. announced it will exhibit its Magellan robotic system at the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) Scientific Meeting Sept. 26-30 in Lisbon, Portugal. The company will showcase the Magellan 6Fr Robotic Catheter that is used by interventional radiologists in embolization procedures, and will conduct Magellan demonstrations.

With the world’s elderly population expected to double by 2050, understanding how aging affects the body is an important focus for researchers globally. Cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, often is associated with aging arteries that restrict blood flow. Now, University of Missouri researchers have identified an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction, a finding that could lead to future treatments for some forms of vascular disease.

University of Texas Southwestern cardiologist Benjamin Levine, M.D., will use NASA-honed technology to monitor swimmer Ben Lecomte in his record-setting goal to become the first person to swim across the Pacific Ocean. Lecomte will plunge into the ocean off of a Tokyo beach this summer heading for San Francisco.