Galway medical firm raises €12m for new product

A MEDICAL devices group based in Galway has raised $17.3 million (€12.4 million) in funding to launch the company’s first product, a coronary stent designed to prevent blockages of smaller arteries feeding the heart.

Cappella specialises in developing stents that aid treatment of complex coronary artery disease. Specifically, it addresses what is called “bifuraction vascular disease” – preventing blockages at the point where smaller arteries branch off larger blood vessels.

Ena Prosser, a director with Fountain Healthcare Partners, one of the new investors to come on board in the current fundraising, explains that inserting traditional stents – small metal mesh tubes placed in arteries to hold them open and prevent further blockages following angioplasty procedures – can displace tissue. This tissue can block smaller arteries.

Cappella’s first product, the Sideguard Sidebranch stent, has received approval from regulators for sale in the European market – estimated to account for just under 40 per cent of the $1 billion worldwide market in bifurcation coronary artery disease – roughly one in four of those people who receive coronary stents.

The company has spent around €25 million over the past four years developing the new stent, which flares at one end to work around the point of intersection between arteries.

The latest fundraising was supported by original investors Irish-based ACT Venture Capital and Polytechnos Partners, a European venture capital firm specialising in early-stage life science business. Fountain Healthcare Partners and Mitsui Co Venture Partners also participated.

Israeli cardiologist Art Rosenthal, who has been appointed chief executive of the firm, is an industry veteran, having previously served as chief scientific officer for medical device giant Boston Scientific between 2000 and 2005. He has since founded another company Labcoat, which developed coating systems for drug-eluting stents. Labcoat, based in Galway, was acquired last year by Boston Scientific.

The inclusion of Mitsui is seen as significant in helping the company break into the Japanese market.

Wolfgang Oster, managing partner at Polytechnos and chairman of Cappella, said his company believes the Sideguard Sidebranch stent has the potential to lead the field in bifurcation devices. “The commercial expertise which the new investors bring to the table in Europe, the US and Japan is reassuring.”

Cappella has yet to seek approval from the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, for the sale of Sideguard in the US market. It expects to work with the FDA on the basis of the product’s success in the European market.

“This is a very exciting company for us and it is a great time to get involved. This is technology that we think will go all the way,” said Dr Prosser.

“Any green shoots that emerge in the Irish economy will come from exports and this is the sort of company that will deliver it.”