Commercial breakthrough beckons for CamStent following £508k funding round

source: www.cabume.co.uk

Now you see it: The commercial adoption of CamStent’s urinary catheter is in sight

CamStent is aiming for a 2013 inaugural license deal following a the raising of half a million pounds in an oversubscribed funding round.

The company closed a £508k from new and existing investors earlier this year bringing the lifetime total to around £1 million. The Cambridge University spin-out and former CUE competition participant now envisages the need for just one more funding round at the beginning of next year to take its urinary catheter to market, hopefully by the end of 2013.

Clare Twemlow, CamStent CFO, told Cabume the money would help progress its development work as well as overcome the regulatory process and clinical trials.

Much of the work over the next 12 months will be focused around building the data package for CE and 510k regulatory submissions, as well as gaining approval of the prototype for its use in our human clinical trial, said Twemlow. The coated catheter needs to show biocompatibility and stability, as well as effectiveness, all of which have been shown in the lab with very encouraging results.

According to Twemlow, this latest funding showed a strong appetite for investment in CamStent, which saw its original target of a £400k round bettered by over 25 per cent.

Newly in was Martlet, the corporate angel investment arm of the Marshall group of companies whose chairman and CEO, Sir Michael Marshall, is an existing CamStent shareholder.

The vast majority of the company’s existing shareholders also followed on according to Twemlow with continued support from London Business Angels, Wren Capital and members of the Yorkshire Association of Business Angels as well as other individuals from the Cambridge investment community.

We were heavily oversubscribed, said Twemlow. We have good base of supportive shareholders and we look forward to delivering value through the urinary catheter application, and as a platform technology, the polymer coating has a host of other exciting medical applications for the future.

CamStent has progressed since it raised £350k last year and has moved into a position where it is actively seeking partners and according to Twemlow has started early discussions with potential license partners.

Raman Minhas has joined us as head of Business Development and he has considerable experience of corporate transactions within the healthcare arena, as well as being a qualified UK doctor, said Twemlow. He is working hard to building the relationships with our future partners.

The urinary catheters are CamStent’s first application of its platform polymer technology. CamStent says that according to the NHS and and the US Center for Disease Control, Catheter Acquired Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI) develop quickly after insertion and are the major class of hospital acquired infections today.

In the UK 25 per cent of all hospital admissions use urinary catherisation to assure bladder drainage. However, the chances of being infected is relatively high with a three per cent per day incidence. Those that have infections find themselves having to extend their stay by an extra six days on average and according to CamStent cost the NHS around £100m each year.

The anti-microbial qualities of CamStent’s biofilm-resistant polymer helps reduce the build up of the organisms that can colonise the catheter, which then leads to infection by damaging the surrounding tissue.