Humedics GmbH, a specialist for rapid and mobile measurement of the individual liver function at the bedside of the patient, today announced the closing of its first equity financing round. The Charité Biomedical Fund (CBF) managed by Peppermint VenturePartners led this round which included VC Fonds Technologie managed by IBB-Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the ERP Startfonds of the KfW, Ventegis and current investor High-Tech Gründerfonds. The funding enables Humedics to complete the final development and early commercialization of its proprietary and CE-marked diagnostic system to determine the liver function of a patient in real time.
Humedics has developed a breath test (LiMAx™ test) based diagnostic system composed of the medical device FLIP™ and a new intravenous diagnostic drug preparation (13C-Methacetin).
More than 100 million people world-wide suffer from chronic liver diseases (i.e. cirrhosis, hepatitis, fatty liver, metabolic disorders and tumors). Evaluating current liver function correctly remains a major challenge for physicians, given that existing tests cannot directly measure liver function quantitatively.
The LiMAx™ test enables the clinician to quantitatively determine the individual liver function capacity within minutes. This allows for deciding on treatment strategies optimally adapted to the individual patients liver status. Current applications include diagnosis of the liver function before and after liver transplantation as well as planning of liver surgeries (for example: How much liver tissue can be extracted without risking post-operative liver failure) and different diseases of the liver such as liver cirrhosis.
The LiMAx™ test was developed at the Charité, Berlin by Dr. M. Stockmann at the Department of General, Visceral, and Transplantation Surgery of Prof. Neuhaus (Charité – University-Medicine, Berlin) and the FLIP™ device by Prof. K. Heyne (Department of Physics, Ultrafast Spectroscopy on Biologically Relevant Systems) at the Free University Berlin.
Up to date the LiMAx™ test has been validated in more than 1.000 patients involving over 5.000 tests and the results have been published in well recognized journals.
Wilfried Heyne; Managing Director of Humedics comments: “We are delighted to have been able to attract this group of experienced MedTech investors including the Charité Biomedical Fund given that Humedics is a “Spin-Off” from Charité and FU-Berlin. The proceeds of this financing will be used to further develop and finalize the FLIP™ / LiMAx™ test-system.”
Dr. Klaus Stöckemann, Chairman of Humedics’ board and Managing Director at Peppermint VenturePartners (the manager of the Charité Biomedical Fund) adds: “We have been following the technology for the last three years and are very happy to work with Humedics and the other co-investors to develop the company towards “the company for personalized medicine for the liver” and make the LiMAx™ test standard of care in liver diagnostics.”
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