Cambridge, MA–Massachusetts Life Sciences Center President & CEO Susan Windham-Bannister and InVivo Therapeutics today announced the Cambridge-based company’s repayment of the Center’s Accelerator Program loan. In May 2009, InVivo Therapeutics, a medical device company working to develop novel treatments for traumatic spinal cord injuries, was awarded a loan of $500,000 from the Center in the first round of a program that provides working capital to early-stage life sciences companies. The loan was repaid in full, with interest, this week for a total repayment of $567,930. The repayment comes after InVivo was successful in securing $10.5 million in private financing. InVivo announced this private placement and became a public corporation today, Wednesday, October 27, 2010.
“InVivo Therapeutics has successfully leveraged our Accelerator loan into substantial private capital,” said Windham-Bannister. “The Accelerator Program was created in order to de-risk promising early-stage companies and make them more attractive to private investors. That some of these companies are in a position to pay us back after a little more than a year demonstrates the success of that approach. We are pleased to accept InVivo’s repayment of our loan, and look forward to an ongoing partnership with the team at InVivo Therapeutics.”
Said Frank Reynolds, CEO of InVivo Therapeutics, “The program is perfectly named the Accelerator Program Loan, as it did help advance our company to the next level. We’re proud that we’ve not only paid back the taxpayers of Massachusetts, but also created quality full-time and part-time manufacturing, scientific, and business jobs for citizens of the Commonwealth.”
Dr. Eric Ruby, founder of the spinal cord injury research advocate organization Massachusetts Walks Again, said “I am so excited and delighted that we are making progress in an area that has been so woefully underfunded by the government, and that the state was innovative enough to fund a program that has yielded such humanitarian and economic benefit so quickly.” Continued Dr. Ruby, “Investment in the cure for spinal cord injury is an investment in healthcare savings.”
InVivo Therapeutics’ platform technologies provide a novel approach to the treatment of spinal cord injuries (SCI). The Company’s approach uses biodegradable polymer scaffolds to support neuroprotection and neuroplasticity. InVivo has an unmatched development portfolio that will continue to expand in the next few years to include combination treatments, including polymer-based drug delivery and scaffolds seeded with stem cells. The company is in the process of filing an Investigational Device Exemption to request a human pilot study in individuals with acute spinal cord injuries. In September 2010, Good Start Genetics became the first company to pay back an Accelerator loan from the Life Sciences Center, after the company raised a Series A round of $18 million.
About InVivo Therapeutics
InVivo Therapeutics Corporation is a Cambridge, MA medical device company focused on utilizing polymers as a platform technology to develop treatments to restore function in individuals paralyzed as a result of traumatic spinal cord injury. The company was founded in 2005 on the basis of proprietary technology co-invented by Robert Langer, ScD, Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Joseph P. Vacanti, MD, who is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
About the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (“the Center”) is a quasi-public agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts tasked with implementing the Massachusetts Life Sciences Act, a ten-year, $1 billion initiative that was signed into law in June of 2008. The Center’s mission is to create jobs in the life sciences and support vital scientific research that will improve the human condition. This work includes making financial investments in public and private institutions that are advancing life sciences research, development and commercialization as well as building ties between sectors of the Massachusetts life sciences community. For more information, visit www.masslifesciences.com.
About the Life Sciences Accelerator Program
In order to expand life sciences-related employment opportunities, promote health-related innovations and stimulate research and development, manufacturing and commercialization in the life sciences, the Life Sciences Accelerator Program provides loans to companies engaged in life sciences research and development, commercialization and manufacturing in Massachusetts. Target entities are generally early-stage life sciences companies with a high-potential for technology commercialization, rapid growth, and downstream private equity financing. The program is designed to help sustain these companies through a critical stage of development and to leverage additional sources of capital to bring cutting edge innovation to the marketplace.
