Massive amounts of capital must be raised to get new drugs and...

Massive amounts of capital must be raised to get new drugs and medical devices through the years of trials needed prove safety and efficacy. That capital can either come from investors or from taxpayers but given the high amount of failures among drugs and to a lesser extent devices, it's probably way too much risk for taxpayers to stomach.

$400 million will likely be spent getting the DurAVR to commercialization. That money has to come from somewhere with the vast majority of it in the form of issued shares. Public markets work for clinical stage companies because they match investors who have a significant appetite for risk with companies that may someday offer huge rewards. That's why we are all here.

The great part is that there are many hundreds of publicly traded clinical stage companies all over the world so we can choose which ones we want to invest in and size our positions accordingly depending on our individual assessments of risk and projections of future dilution. I've researched well over 200 and am currently in 5, including AVR.