SurgaColl to raise €3m for new product
Courtesy of: The Sunday Business Post, 17th January 2016
SurgaColl, a spin-out of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, will raise up to €3 million in investment within three months as it begins to market bone regeneration technology, developed over ten years, in the European market.
The Dublin company is working with Viant Capital in the US to raise the capital ahead of the launch of its HydroxyColl product in Britain and France, where it has signed up exclusive distributors.
SurgaColl has secured the CE Mark, a mandatory regulatory standard for products sold in the EU, for HydroxyColl, which stimulates the regeneration of bone tissue, acting as a substitute for bone grafts. The product was developed by the RCSI in collaboration with Amber, a research centre for materials science based in Trinity College Dublin.
SurgaColl was formed in 2010 and raised seed funding of € 3 million from Enterprise Equity, Enterprise Ireland and a group of private equity investors in Britain. Last June, it closed a € 2 million syndicated investment round involving the AIB Seed Capital Fund, Harmac Medical Products, Enterprise Ireland and private investors in Britain, France and Singapore.
The investment allowed the company to move to a purpose-built clean room facility in Dublin City University, where it is developing a second product, ChondroColl, which repairs articular joints by stimulating host stem cells to regenerate bone and cartilage.
ChondroColl will be submitted for CE mark approval this month, while HydroxyColl will be submitted for FDA approval in the US.
RCSI’s Tissue Regeneration Group has separately secured a € 1 million research grant from Science Foundation Ireland and the Health Research Board to fund ChondroColl’s clinical trials. “Our strategy for HydroxyColl in Europe will be to balance the scale of each opportunity and the time it takes to be put on the approved list, or hospital catalogue, in each country,” said John Gleeson, chief executive and co-founder of Hydroxy-Coll. “In the meantime, we will be identifying key opinion-leading surgeons, who would be product champions – early adopters – who would then attend international conferences and present the outcome of the implantations and product performance.
“This is a product with great potential for early intervention in joint injuries, minimising long-term damage and potentially reducing the risk of osteoarthritis and need for knee-replacement surgery” – John O’Byrne, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, RCSI.
Pictured above from left to right: Fergal O’Brien, professor of bioengineering and regenerative medicine and head of tissue engineering research group, RCSI; John O’Dea, manager, high-potential start-ups – industrial, Enterprise Ireland; Eric Reed, non-executive director, and John Gleeson, chief executive, both of SurgaColl Technologies