We round up the latest deals and partnership news from across the Health Tech World
Medtech secures £3.8m as it rolls out knee op device in UK and US
A UK medtech company whose device aims to revolutionise knee replacement surgery has raised a further £3.8m from The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II).
The £660m NPIFII covers the entire North of England and provides loans from £25k to £2m and equity investment up to £5m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to start up, scale up or stay ahead.
The funding will enable Eventum Orthopaedics to build stocks of its product following its launch in the UK, US and New Zealand and to help it develop two new devices.
Eventum’s QuadSense device helps surgeons to precisely cut and place the kneecap in total knee replacements.
QuadSense, has already gained regulatory approvals in the UK and US and been used in over 300 procedures. The company has now appointed distributors in both countries and in a number of other key international markets, and it is developing similar devices for shoulder and hip operations.
Eventum Founder and CEO, John Naybour, said: “Total knee replacement is a common operation, yet two out of ten patients are not happy with the results and one in ten is very dissatisfied.
“Our mission is to improve success rates by providing data to help surgeons to make better clinical decisions.”
Biotech secures follow-on funding for ‘3D lung’ to replace animal testing
A UK biotech start-up with a 3D human lung model that provides an alternative to animal testing has raised a further £600,000 from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, Mercia Ventures and Pioneer Group.
ImmuONE’s laboratory model is used to test new drugs, chemicals or consumer products to provide evidence they are safe to use.
The funding will enable it to continue to develop its capabilities, target new sectors such as agrichemicals and automotive and expand its 12-strong team with the appointment of two new scientists.
ImmuONE’s 3D laboratory model not only enables companies to replace or reduce the need for animal testing but also provides results that are more reliable and reproducible.
With research having found that around 90 per cent of drugs shown to be safe and effective in animals do not work as planned in humans, animal testing is now considered one of the reasons for the high failure rate in drug development.
Co-founder, Dr Abigail Martin, said: “Our mission is to help companies avoid unnecessary animal testing and provide more accurate and relevant test results.
“This latest funding will enable us to continue building our range of tests and assays and use our model for different purposes, across different industries.”
INSIGHT at Moorfields Eye Hospital collaborates with insitro in eye health partnership
The INSIGHT Health Data Research Hub at Moorfields Eye Hospital and insitro, a machine learning-enabled drug discovery and development company, and have announced a new collaboration to advance drug discovery.
The collaboration will develop a novel AI foundation model to aid in genetic discovery of new ocular biomarkers for precision patient segmentation and therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative and related conditions.
INSIGHT is the world’s largest ophthalmic imaging bioresource, containing 35 million eye images, including an extensive repository of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images linked to several decades of clinical information.
These data include diagnostic information for various chronic disorders of aging, such as neurodegenerative, ophthalmic, and metabolic diseases.
Professor Pearse Keane of INSIGHT, said: “Working with insitro to develop a novel foundation model serves INSIGHT’s mission to benefit patients, the NHS and wider society through the development of new tools for disease detection, diagnosis, and treatment.
“This will be the first collaboration of its type for INSIGHT at Moorfields and represents a mutual commitment with insitro to unlocking new discoveries to improve human health using clinical data and AI.
“We have designed the collaboration to ensure the safety and privacy of patient data, with only INSIGHT at Moorfields researchers accessing the data, in a secure environment.”
Valo Health and nference announce long-term partnership
Valo Health, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on transforming the drug discovery and development process using human-centric data and artificial intelligence (AI), hasannounced a multi-year collaboration with nference.
The research collaboration will leverage decades of comprehensive, HIPAA-compliant, fully de-identified patient-level data from the nference federated AI network to enhance the capabilities of Valo’s Opal Computational Platform, enabling advances in the discovery and development of drug targets and precision medicines.
The collaboration grants Valo the ability to use the nference AI platform.
Use of the nference AI platform provides Valo with real-time access to a wide range of data modes, including insights from physicians’ notes, medical imaging and outcomes data, patients’ diagnostic and treatment information, and lab results.
Brett Blackman, Ph.D., chief operating officer at Valo Health, said: “We are entering a new era of medicine made possible by abundant clinical data and an enhanced ability to analyse it.
“Our collaboration gives us access to nference’s deep multimodal, longitudinal data and AI software platform, which will allow us to learn through observation while accelerating and widening the scope of experimentation.
“Together, with nference and our other ecosystem partners, we aim to shorten the drug development timeline and bring critical treatment options to the patients who need them the most.”
