Galway based medical device company Venari Medical has raised €4.5m in seed equity funding to accelerate the development of its BioVena device for the treatment of chronic venous disease.
The company is a National University of Ireland Galway spin-out, through the BioInnovate Ireland programme.
Chronic venous disease (CVD) affects up to 30% of adults across the world and it results in a significant deterioration in quality of life for sufferers, especially those with advanced skin breakdown known as venous leg ulcers.
The market opportunity of CVD treatment is over $2 billion annually in the US and European Union, Venari said.
It said the latest investment round was led by Nipro Corporation, a leading medical product manufacturer based in Osaka in Japan.
The Western Development Commission and Enterprise Ireland also contributed to the investment, in addition to international medical device experts and vascular surgeons.
Venari CEO and co-founder Stephen Cox said that the seed investment accelerates a huge opportunity to improve the quality of life of sufferers of chronic venous disease (CVD) across the globe.
"This funding enables the clinical validation of our BioVena medical device, which we are confident will offer patients a less invasive and highly effective office-based treatment that is also an intuitive procedure for physicians treating CVD," Stephen Cox said.
"We believe that widespread adoption of the BioVena device has significant cost saving potential for healthcare systems," he added.
Tomás Ó Síocháin, CEO of the Western Development Commission, said the investment underlines the importance of supporting innovation driven enterprises, building on the success of the existing medtech ecosystem in Ireland's western region.
