St. Jude Medical

In 1976, an entrepreneur named Manny Villafana decided to take on a new venture. Having already founded a successful pacemaker company, he set his sights on a novel bi-leaflet artificial heart valve being developed at the University of Minnesota. Villafana, along with co-founder Peter Gombrich, established St. Jude Medical to commercialize this technology. They named the company after the patron saint of lost causes, a fitting choice for such an ambitious medical undertaking. The company moved quickly. It went public in February 1977, and by October of that year, the first St. Jude Medical heart valve was successfully implanted in a human patient. This valve, coated in a special material called pyrolytic carbon, was designed to reduce blood clotting, a significant risk with earlier devices. This core innovation set the stage for the company's growth. Over the next several decades, St. Jude Medical expanded its focus beyond heart valves, making strategic acquisitions to enter markets for pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, and neuromodulation devices for chronic pain. The playbook was clear: identify and acquire technologies that complemented its growing cardiovascular portfolio. This strategy transformed the company into a diversified global medical device powerhouse. The final chapter of its independent story was written in 2016. Abbott Laboratories announced it would acquire St. Jude Medical for $25 billion. The deal, completed in January 2017, created a dominant player in the cardiovascular device market, combining St. Jude's strengths in heart failure and rhythm management with Abbott's expertise in coronary interventions.