ClearDrum Team

Professor Marcus Atlas

Inventor (Founding Director, Ear Science Institute Australia)

Professor Atlas has dedicated his career to helping people with ear and hearing disorders as a distinguished surgeon-scientist.

As the Chair of Translational Ear Science at Curtin University, Emeritus Professor UWA and Head of a team of internationally renowned tympanic membrane biology and regeneration applied science researchers, Professor Atlas has an international reputation in ear and skull base surgery.

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Carel Smit

Chief Executive Officer

Carel Smit is a life sciences executive with more than 25 years’ experience in life science intellectual property and commercialisation. He is an intellectual property attorney and medtech entrepreneur with masters degrees in genetics, law, and management, including an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from Cambridge University.

Filippo Valente

Chief Technology Officer

Dr Filippo Valente is a biomedical scientist specialising in the research, development and commercialization of medical devices, including drug delivery systems and polymer-based surgical implants.  He obtained is PhD from the University of Padua (Italy) and the KTH University (Sweden) with a thesis on the development and biocompatibility of lipid nanoparticles for the delivery of drugs in the inner ear.  Dr Valente has worked on the development of the ClearDrum device since 2017.

Over ten years of research and development to treat tympanic membrane perforation

The History of the ClearDrum Product

2012

Professor Marcus Atlas began the collaboration with Deakin University Future Fibres Hub to create an innovative silk material for the treatment of chronic middle ear perforation.

2013

Silk scaffolds are successfully used to repair tympanic membranes in an animal model (Shen Y et al.,2013).

2016

A silk material formulation is created to support long-term implants (Allardyce BJ, et al 2016).

2017

The ClearDrum project is awarded US$2.75 million from the Wellcome Trust (UK) to support the translation.

2017

ClearDrum silk scaffold outperformed the current gold standard treatment tympanic membrane repair in in vitro model (Allardyce BJ et al 2017).

2019

Commenced working with our US manufacturer.

2020

The ClearDrum project was awarded US$705,000 from the Australian Government through the BioMed Tech Horizon Program (MTP Connect) to begin its commercialisation.

2023

ClearDrum Pty Ltd was established.