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Calgary-based medical device startup Fluid Biomed has secured $27 million USD in Series A funding to fuel the development of its innovative stent for brain aneurysms.
Founded in 2012 by a pair of academic neurosurgeons who are also University of Calgary professors, CEO Dr. John Wong and president and CTO Dr. Alim Mitha, the pre-revenue, clinical-stage medtech startup is building what Wong claims is “the world’s first bioabsorbable stent for the brain.”
“As clinicians, we came up with the concept,” Wong told BetaKit in an interview. “As scientists, we developed the idea in the research lab at our university, and as entrepreneurs, now we are commercializing the idea.”
Fluid Biomed’s flow-diverting brain stent is constructed of bioabsorbable polymer and metal, a move away from stents traditionally made purely of metal. The startup plans to use this Series A funding to validate the device in more expanded human clinical studies.
The all-equity, all-primary round closed last month. It was co-led by Canada’s Amplitude Ventures and an undisclosed “major strategic investor” from the medical space that Wong declined to name to BetaKit, but claimed offers a “pathway forward” to commercialization.
Fellow new backers LifeArc Ventures, out of the United Kingdom, and United States (US)-based IAG Capital Partners also participated, alongside existing US investors ShangBay Capital and METIS Innovative. Wong declined to disclose Fluid Biomed’s valuation.
This represents a sizeable medtech Series A round. Fluid Biomed claims that the company’s latest financing represents Canada’s largest medtech Series A of 2024 for any medical device company.
A brain aneurysm is a bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain that can leak or rupture, which can lead to a stroke. According to Wong, there are two ways to treat brain aneurysms. One involves opening up the skull and installing a clamp. The other is using stents, which are typically installed in a less invasive way.
But Wong argued that existing, pure metal stents have key limitations: they stay in the body forever, increasing the risk of clot formation; they require patients to stay on blood thinners for the rest of their lives; and they cause interference with CT and MRI scans, which can lead to angiograms, which are more invasive, being required.
Fluid Biomed’s stent, which is made primarily of polymer with a small portion of metal, is designed to disappear over time, which the founders claim will allow blood vessels to heal better than with pure metal stents. Wong noted that polymer is used elsewhere in the body as part of approved products, and is softer than metal, which he said enables it to fit into more blood vessels and spots than existing devices.
He claimed this polymer-based device also enables clinicians to see the brain more clearly than pure metal alternatives. The startup’s stent is designed to be installed through a blood vessel in the groin during an in-hospital procedure guided by X-ray using tiny tubes and catheters.
Fluid Biomed’s flow-diverting brain stent is constructed of bioabsorbable polymer and metal, a move away from stents traditionally made purely of metal. The startup plans to use this Series A funding to validate the device in more expanded human clinical studies.
The Series A round brings Fluid Biomed’s total funding to $32.5 million, a figure that includes $4.7 million in seed funding from mid-2021. Shortly after that financing, Wong said the company rebranded from Fluid Biotech to its current name, Fluid Biomed, to convey that it is focusing more on the medical market than the pharmaceutical space.
Since that financing, Fluid Biomed has continued developing its product, publishing research, and conducting its first in-human clinical study. The startup views this funding as a way to help it reach a “larger, pivotal-type study”—the kind that would be required by regulators.
“Our focus now is … validating it in rigorous pre-clinical studies to get to the larger patient trials,” Mitha told BetaKit.
Amplitude, which had been tracking Fluid Biomed for years, was excited by the company’s recent progress and the interest it had garnered from strategic players.
“We have a mix of everything,” Amplitude Ventures co-founder and partner Jean-Francois Pariseau told BetaKit in an interview. “Great technology, superb founders, and a very good team … teaming up with world-class investors and strategic partners.”
Pariseau described Fluid Biomed as “the perfect fit” for Amplitude, which closed its second precision medicine venture capital fund earlier this year at $263 million CAD. He noted that Amplitude typically targets Canadian companies with early proof-of-concept and multiple shots on goal. “Fluid really fit that bill,” he said.
While Fluid Biomed is still years away from securing regulatory approval for its product from Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration, Pariseau noted that the device has already demonstrated results with initial patients, and said he sees potential down the road for the startup to apply it to the cardiovascular space.
Wong said Fluid Biomed is focused on getting to market as soon as possible, but declined to share an exact timeline. For now, the startup plans to conduct an early feasibility study and another clinical trial in Europe in 2025. Fluid Biomed plans to use the data from these studies to support a larger patient trial in the US and Canada.
