Paul Castella, Ph.D., MBA

CardioSpectra Inc. – President and CFO

Innovation’s road can be long and bumpy, but also navigable with the right people and a lot of patience, says Paul Castella, president and chief financial officer for CardioSpectra Inc.

“You need to surround yourself with the right people, be open to the right idea when it comes along, have a lot of staying power and always retain the flexibility to adapt as circumstances and opportunities evolve,” he says.

San Antonio-based CardioSpectra specializes in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a technology that provides body tissue images with greater speed and resolution than current practices, including ultrasound.

“This can provide a physician with critically important information when they are trying to treat a patient suffering from arterial disease,” says Castella.

The group has several OCT patents and is working toward Federal Drug Administration approval and a marketplace launch.

CardioSpectra, which formed in 2005 and has 16 people on staff, attracted acquisition interest after demonstrating its technology to the interventional cardiovascular field at a 2007 New Orleans convention. It became the first Texas Emerging Technology Fund recipient to be acquired by a larger company when Volcano Corporation completed a deal worth up to $63 million in December 2007, says Castella. 

Historically, Texas has needed improvement in funding and developing its intellectual property into successful products, says Castella. But that is starting to change.

“If you couple that with the advantages that Texas does have, such as people with a great ‘can do’ attitude, a substantially lower cost of doing business and the fact that it is a great place to live and raise a family, then you have fertile ground for entrepreneurs looking to start up new businesses,” he says.

For more information, contact Paul Castella, paul@targetedtech.com, (210) 582-5820.