Investment
The quoted technology commercialisation company Braveheart plc has led a further £1 million funding round for Tayside Flow Technologies (TFT), along with the development body Scottish Enterprise, company managers and private investors. Braveheart first invested in TFT in 2002 and has since participated in a number of funding rounds.
TFT was founded in 1998 as a spin-out from Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust to commercialise technology for regulating blood flow in medical implants. This can reduce bloodflow turbulence and disturbance in implants such as grafts and stents, thereby increasing patency and mitigating downstream disease progression.
The company says that it has made significant progress in the past 12 months and will use the additional funding to advance the commercialisation of its novel peripheral bypass graft, which has now been launched in several European markets.
The global market for TFT's products is estimated to be around £11 billion. The graft market has seen little innovation in the past 20 years and the company says its technology has the potential to extend both the quality and lifespan of cardiovascular devices.
The lead product is a peripheral vascular graft that is used to bypass blocked arteries. The graft successfully completed clinical trials and achieved European authorisation in January 2008. It has been launched in several European countries, and TFT expects the graft to be launched in the US in the first half of 2009.
David Lawrence, CEO of Tayside Flow Technologies, said, “We are pleased to have secured funding which will enable us to complete registration and commercialise our lead products. The market for such products is both large and growing and we believe our unique technology will benefit patients, surgeons and hospitals by increasing device patency, reducing surgery times compared to vein harvesting, and avoiding amputations.”
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