Article preview from Start Up- November 01, 2010
The emerging device companies that have been hardest hit by the economic woes of the past couple of years have been those looking for later-stage financing. These companies face venture investors who are either unwilling or unable to invest in late-stage deals, while also confronting an IPO market that largely remains closed to them, particularly in the US. In Europe, however, that may be changing, most notably in France, where Stentys SAS, which is developing stents to treat acute myocardial infarctions, recently became the second device company to successfully go public this year.
Article preview from Start Up- November 01, 2010
The emerging device companies that have been hardest hit by the economic woes of the past couple of years have been those looking for later-stage financing. These companies face venture investors who are either unwilling or unable to invest in late-stage deals, while also confronting an IPO market that largely remains closed to them, particularly in the US. In Europe, however, that may be changing, most notably in France, where Stentys SAS, which is developing stents to treat acute myocardial infarctions (AMIs), recently became the second device company to successfully go public this year. [201030489] (The other was Carmat SAS, an artificial heart company founded by noted cardiac surgeon Alain Carpentier, MD.) [201030303]
Gonzague Issenmann, Stentys' CEO, acknowledges that the company's timing has been fortunate, having raised its last round of financing in March 2008, thereby avoiding the challenges presented by the current market. Issenmann co-founded Stentys in 2006 with cardiac surgeon/entrepreneur, Jacques Seguin, MD, PhD, who also launched CoreValve (now Medtronic CoreValve LLC, after being acquired by Medtronic Inc. last year for $700 million), one of the leaders in transcatheter heart valves. [200910024] Stentys was initially founded to develop an innovative nitinol stent designed by Seguin for the treatment of bifurcated coronary lesions. The company soon recognized that this device was also effective in treating AMI, an unmet clinical need representing a larger potential market than bifurcations, and it shifted its focus to this new therapeutic area. ( See "Stentys' Shifting Focus: Moving Beyond Bifurcations, Stenting for AMI," IN VIVO, December 2009 [2009800224].)
Supported by a small group of investors, Stentys has made significant progress with relatively little money raised. The company raised its €1.2 million Series A round (€1.1 million from Sofinnova Partners and €100,000 from angel investors) in late 2006. That was followed by a two-tranched Series B round: €12 million from Scottish Equity Partners and Sofinnova in March 2008 and June 2009, and €3 million in June 2009 from Crédit Agricole Private Equity. [200830138] With that funding, Stentys gained CE Mark approval on both bare-metal and drug-eluting versions of its stent, while also completing two successful clinical trials demonstrating the superiority of this device over current treatment for AMI. (The two versions of the stent serve two distinct markets. Physicians often prefer drug-eluting stents (DES) for restenosis patients, while for AMI, many physicians prefer bare-metal devices. Most AMI patients are treated on an emergency basis and frequently lack the continuity of care that is necessary for prescribing the kind of dual anti-platelet drugs that are generally required following DES implantation.)
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