Israeli stroke treatment developer Rapid Medical has closed a $9 million Series B financing round led by Israel's BRM Group and China's Shanghai Israel Investment Fund with the participation of Winnovation Capital and Gefen Capital.
Yokneam based Rapid Medical develops neurovascular interventional devices and strives to advance the commercialization of minimally invasive stroke treatment and prevention products including the TIGERTRIEVER Revascularization Device, and the COMANECI, Adjustable Remodeling Mesh. To date, thousands of patients have benefited from the TIGERTRIEVER and the COMANECI in life-saving neurovascular procedures.
Stroke are the leading cause of disability in the world and the second most frequent cause of death. Most strokes are caused by a blockage in the vessels providing blood supply to the brain. The rest are caused by a rupture in those vessels. Approximately 4 million Chinese patients and 800,000 American patients suffer strokes every year.
The funding will support regulatory clearance in the US as well as continuing to advance the European commercialization of both devices. Specifically, the funding will support initiation of Rapid Medical’s clinical trial, TIGER, which will begin enrolling patients next year at selected centers in the United States, Europe and Israel.
The TIGERTRIEVER is the only controllable, fully-visible stentriever that can be adjusted by the physician to perfectly fit the dimensions of blocked blood vessels that cause acute ischemic stroke. The COMANECI is the first-ever controllable, fully-visible aneurysm neck-bridging mesh device that does not require parent vessel occlusion. It is intended to provide temporary assistance for embolization of intracranial aneurysms. The TIGERTRIEVER and COMANECI makes use of Rapid Medical’s proprietary and advanced braiding platform technology which allows the design of unique braided stent structures which are fully visible and provide on-demand high radial force.
Dr. Shimon Eckhouse, Rapid’s co-founder and chairman said, “This significant financing round by leading global VC’s is an important milestone in the life of Rapid Medical giving the company the financial strength needed to exploit the huge opportunity in the stroke treatment market. The global basis of our investors adds to the strength of the company and will enable us to expand our presence in this exciting market.”
BRM partner Alon Maor said, “Stroke is the last frontier in vascular medicine. We have been searching for some time for a company with products that could potentially provide patients with dramatically improved outcomes. Rapid Medical’s TIGERTRIEVER and COMANECI devices which are based on a profound underlining technology and the excellent feedback we received from the market convinced us that the company is poised to become a leader in the neurovascular field. In addition, we were highly impressed with the team and with their commercial achievements in this rapidly growing market.”
As part of the financing round Alon Maor, Dr. Qu Liefeng and Barak Ben Eliezer will join Rapid Medical’s board of directors.
Rapid Medical CEO Ronen Eckhouse said, “These are exciting times for the company. We are honored to have such accomplished investors supporting the company. We are confident that with these funds and with such group of experienced individuals in our board we will be able to achieve our clinical and commercial goals. We already started to expand our team with a group of clinical and commercial experts that will be deployed across Europe and the US."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 17, 2017
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