Medical device start-up secures £735k seed funding

A medical device start-up based at Alderley Park, QV Bioelctronics, has raised £735,000 in seed funding to support its development of a new implant to treat brain tumours.

The start-up’s QV-GRACE electrotherapy implant aims to increase the survival rate of the most aggressive brain tumours, glioblastoma. This tumour has a survival rate of just 4% and has affected US presidential candidate John McCain and former Labour Cabinet Minister, Tessa Jowell.

QV Bioelectronics’ implant uses electric fields to provide continuous, targeted and pain free treatment to patients for whom survival is currently typically less than one year, even with the best treatments currently available. The seed funding for the medical device firm will help support development on the QV-GRACE implant and collect necessary preclinical data ahead of regulatory submission. The technology however is still at an early stage of development, with several years before QV-GRACE can enter clinical trials.

The £735,000 seed funding secured was provided by Consilience Ventures, SOSV, Capital Ventures and several angel investors, with the funding round significantly oversubscribed.

QV Bioelectronics chief executive, Dr Christopher Bullock, said:

This investment is a vote of confidence in QV Bioelectronics from sector-expert investors.

“The funds raised will fuel the next phase of development of the QV-GRACE device, allowing the size of the QV Bioelectronics team to grow in the process.

“This will take our innovative electrotherapy technology a few steps closer towards the clinic.”

Dr Deepak Kotak of Consilience Ventures, who has joined the medical device start-up’s board, said:

We are excited to be supporting QV Bioelectronics advance an elegant and novel technology to help improve longevity and quality of life of GBM patients, an area of huge and longstanding unmet medical need.”