CLEVELAND — A heart-assist pump developed at the Cleveland Clinic to help diseased hearts is being licensed to a Pennsylvania company for production and human testing.

        Clinic officials said Thursday that they expect human testing could begin in Europe in 12 to 18 months.

        Arrow International Inc., of Reading, Pa., will bring the heart-assist pump to market. The value of the contract was not disclosed.

        “It's the largest license in the history of the Cleveland Clinic,” said clinic spokesman Christopher Coburn.

        Dr. Leonard Golding, a clinic heart surgeon and researcher who led a team that has spent 12 years on the pump's design, said the clinic needed “the appropriate commercial partner that could run with it.”

        The pump, called Cor-Aide, is known as a left ventricular assist device because it increases the blood-circulating ability of the heart's main pumping chamber, the left ventricle.

        Arrow also has a licensing deal with Penn State University's Hershey Medical Center to develop a permanent heart pump.

        Cor-Aide doesn't beat. Patients who use it will have a constant flow of blood. It is much more compact than pulsing pumps, so it can be used in smaller patients, and it may not require that patients take drugs to avoid blood clots.

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