ECHO Spotlight Series: AllStent

Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) is a 12-month national training program supporting cardiovascular research commercialization through education, mentorship, networking, and funding. Led by a diverse team of experts, ECHO fosters successful startups in cardiovascular health, culminating in ECHO PITCH, a pitch competition offering up to $250,000 in funding.

With the 2024-2025 ECHO cohort preparing to compete at ECHO PITCH on October 15, 2025 (if you’d like to join our live audience, please see more details here), we took the opportunity to sit down with  the venture finalists to learn more about them, their commercialization process, and how the ECHO program has helped their entrepreneurship journey so far. Today we’re speaking with the team at AllStent, including co-founders Paul Chipperton (CEO), Georgiana Olteanu, Dr. Sara Barati, Dr. Anna Ramella, Dr. Giulia Luraghi, Dr. Francesco Migliavacca, and Clinical Advisor Dr. Santi Trimarchi.

Tell us a little bit about AllStent

“Measure 1,000 times, stent-deploy once – exactly where it should go,” should be the credo of every vascular clinician and patient. The reality is much more troubling: everyone’s vascular is unique, but big companies’ stents come from standardized libraries. There is often a mismatch on the operating table, leading to many post-surgical complications and re-interventions.

AllStent Inc. uses advanced software models and machine learning (ML) to run thousands of “best fit” scenarios between each patient’s anatomical digital-twin that we build and all the available stents we’ve modelled.

AllStent is the only start-up addressing this unmet need for the most difficult surgery – TEVAR (thoracic endovascular aortic repair) pre-planning procedures. We are advancing toward an FDA 510k class II submission in the next 9-12 months, with plans to launch first in the USA, then Canada, then Europe.

What was the inspiration behind creating AllStent?

Dr. Migliavacca has been at the forefront of anatomical digital twin modelling and improving vascular interventions for over 20 years. Several colleagues on our team have lost close family members to related diseases, and he saw this as a compelling solution.

Can you explain how the technology for TEVAR-Twin works to ensure the “best fit” during stent surgery?

Simply put, every person’s vascular anatomy is unique, and changes with age. There are many off-the-shelf vascular stents. Neither clinicians nor patients want to gamble on “approximately getting the right stent to potentially fit the average anatomy.” Consequently, we developed proprietary software to precisely and accurately model both the patient’s unique vasculature. This includes the physical and mechanical characteristics of each stent. Then we run thousands of scenarios to get the absolute best fit, BEFORE a patient is on the table.

What makes AllStent distinct from other methods currently available for patients undergoing stent surgery?

• We are the only company with a TEVAR software product in the latter stages of FDA submission
• Our unique approach, process, and tacit knowledge are translating into reproducible data that could elevate our methodology to be the new gold-standard (potentially for other related aneurysms)
• All of this is captured in a growing IP estate, exclusively developed and licensed to AllStent

What has been the biggest benefit of being part of the ECHO program so far? 

Up until ECHO, we had been a predominantly academic team with almost no commercial development, regulatory, financial, or operational training. Now, we have three under-35 year-old female MSc and PhD co-founders, who understand the spectrum of commercialization.

How does AllStent plan to expand or evolve in the next five to ten years?  

First, we are a medical software AI company that has four female founders holding advanced degrees and PhDs. We plan to continue promoting and enhancing our young female-forward tech company – and we won’t compromise on that. Our CEO intends to hand over the reins to one of the commercially trained team members within 24 months after a major financing. In addition, while grand visions are nice, building start-ups is very hard. That’s why our focus for the next 3-5 years is on launching and winning the TEVAR market – a monumental achievement in itself.

ABOUT ECHO

ECHO is a specialized entrepreneurship training and mentorship program led by veteran entrepreneurs and consultants across a variety of sectors. Ventures participating in this 12-month online training program receive entrepreneurship training, mentorship, partnership and funding opportunities; support towards creating and growing their high-impact, health-focused startup; and tools to accelerate the translation of their health innovations from the bench to the bedside.

ECHO was launched in 2018 under the University of Toronto’s Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP) at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research. To date, ECHO has supported 178 participants and 69 ventures, awarding over $1.5 million to help transform cutting-edge cardiovascular research into real-world solutions.

Building on this success, ECHO rebranded this year to the Entrepreneurship for Commercialization of Health Opportunities (ECHO) program, with expansion beyond its initial focus on cardiovascular  health to include all areas of health research and care. ECHO is now led by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, in collaboration with the Translational Biology & Engineering Program (TBEP), and with support from the Health Innovation Hub (H2i), Temerty Medicine’s health accelerator. To learn more, please visit https://rhse.temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/ECHO.