Cardica hires regulatory specialist.

Cardica, Inc. of Redwood City, CA has appointed Ric Ruedy as vice president of regulatory, clinical and quality affairs.

Ruedy, who has 20 years of experience in the industry, previously was director of regulatory affairs at Abbott Vascular, where he worked for the endovascular and vessel closure business units. He oversaw all regulatory operations for Class II and III medical devices. Earlier in his career, Ruedy served as vice president of regulatory, clinical and governmental affairs for Parallax Medical (acquired by ArthroCare Corp.) and held clinical, regulatory and quality assurance positions at Medtronic and Baxter Healthcare. In addition, he co-founded Acta Vascular Systems, a private neurovascular device company that recently merged with CardioVasc Inc.

"Ric's extensive experience leading clinical and regulatory efforts both domestically and internationally will be instrumental as we work to increase the adoption of our C-Port system, pursue US regulatory approval of our PAS-Port system and continue development of additional products based on our proprietary anastomosis technology," said Bernard A. Hausen, MD, PhD, president and CEO of Cardica.