The Western Development Commission has invested €340,000 in Vivasure Medical  in Galway.  The company announced recently that it had topped up its equity base with €16.5m in Series C financing, bringing total capital raised since the venture was established in 2009 to €35m.

Vivasure Medical's latest Companies Office filings point to €7.2m being raised in August 2016, when the taxpayer-funded WDC invested. The latest available annual report for the Commission's activities is from 2013, when taxpayer funding was €1.3 million. Salaries and pensions accounted for two-thirds of operating costs.

The Series C funding round was led by Life Sciences Partners in the Netherlands and Evonik Venture Capital in Germany. Panakès Partners from Italy, Orchestra Medical and Ascent Biomedical from the US,  and Irish VC Fountain Healthcare also participated.

According to CEO Gerard Brett: “Our goal is to facilitate improved therapeutic results for patients over the open-surgery alternative, faster recovery times, and cost savings for the healthcare system.”

The funding will support European commercialization of the company’s PerQseal technology to meet the demand for absorbable, percutaneous vessel closure products, as well as execution of a US Food and Drug Administration regulatory study.

In Association with

The device has been successfully evaluated in clinical studies, with patients treated in four European countries, achieving 97 percent device technical success with no major device related complications.

The global market for large arteriotomy closure devices is growing rapidly and is expected to be more than $500m by 2021, according to the company.

Vivasure Medical Ltd booked a loss of €4.4 million in 2015, bringing accumulated losses to €22.8m. Average pay, pension and other benefits for 16 staff was €98,000.