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SAN LEANDRO, CA – (May 30, 2013) Mercator MedSystems, Inc., a privately-held medical technology company reinventing the treatment of disease deep inside the body, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series B financing. The funding will be used to initiate sales of its Cricket™ and Bullfrog® Micro-Infusion devices in Europe, the United States and Australia – and support clinical validation of its product platform to treat peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD is a critical health issue affecting 12-14 percent of the general population and nearly 70 percent of those over the age of 70; approximately 23 million Western Europeans and 17 million Americans suffer with the disease.
The Series B financing was co-led by three national venture capital investment firms, New York-based Volcano Capital and two San Francisco-based firms, Crocker Capital and Aphelion Capital®. Washington D.C.-based Windy City Inc. and SET Technology Gmbh, a German-based investment fund, are also participating in the financing. With this series of financing, Mercator Medsystems has raised a total of $18.5 million in equity.
“We are thrilled to have achieved this milestone in light of the particularly harsh financing environment for young medical technology companies,” said Mercator’s Chief Executive Officer, Thomas M. Loarie. “Mercator has an exceptional technology platform that provides a new avenue for treating a number of intractable diseases, including vascular disease, cardiac repair, hypertension, and cancer.”
Mercator MedSystem’s Micro-Infusion approach was created at the labs of The University of California, Berkeley in 2000. The company’s proprietary family of FDA 510(k)-cleared Micro-Infusion devices provides targeted treatments via the vascular system. This novel delivery system could reinvent the treatment of disease by allowing clinicians to accurately and efficiently deliver small volumes of drugs and biologics (such as stem cells) to tissues deep in the body, treating the root cause of significant medical conditions. This novel “outside in” mechanism, treating the outside of the vessel wall, or adventitia, as a therapeutic target “may provide the right path to address the vessel injury response cascade that typically accompanies a vascular intervention,” Loarie explained.
Volcano Capital partner Douglas Wall commented, “We recognize the tremendous versatility of Mercator’s micro-infusion platform in treating cardiovascular disease, as well as its promise to improve clinical benefits in the bronchial and oncology spaces. We have great confidence that Mercator’s unique adventitial delivery device could save and vastly improve the quality of life for millions of patients worldwide, while delivering economic efficiencies to the health care system, as well.”
As a result of this financing, Volcano Capital partner, Doug Wall, Aphelion Capital®’s founder Ned Scheetz, and Windy City, Inc. President Joel Kanter will join the Board of Directors, which is comprised of Kirk P. Seward, Ph.D., Chief Science and Technology Officer, Mercator MedSystems; Thomas M. Loarie, Chief Executive Officer, Mercator Medsystems; Charles Crocker, Principal of Crocker Capital; and Neil P. Desai, Ph.D., Vice President, Strategic Platforms at Celgene Corporation.
In addition to its equity financing, Mercator Medsystems has secured $2 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Small Business Administration and other federal agencies since 2010.
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