EnteraSense secures €3.5m funding through Horizon 2020 and private investment

Patients could see benefits of diagnostic device as early as mid-2020

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Chiara Di Carlo and Donal Devery, EnteraSense

Galway medtech start-up EnteraSense has achieved a double milestone, raising €1 million in a seed round and €2.5 million through one of the latest European Union Horizon 2020 grants.

The combined €3.5 million will be used to help commercialise EnteraSense’s technology, build the team to nine members, and further the field of diagnostics.

Founded by entrepreneur and CEO, Donal Devery, EnteraSense has developed a capsule that can detect bleeding in the gastrointestional tract. Post surgical patients who are at risk of further bleeding can have the capsule attached to their stomach to monitor and detect bleeding and thus ensure they get appropriate and quick treatment if needed. To complement this, patients who present in accident and emergency departments and have suspected GI bleeding can swallow the capsule for a quick and easy diagnosis. This will mitigate unnecessary endoscopies which are invasive and in a lot of circumstances unnecessary.

Devery, along with EnteraSense MD, Daragh Sharkey and Programme Manager Chiara Di Carlo, has licenced the groundbreaking technology from Harvard University in Boston. The NDRC-backed company has successfully run initial trials to prove and validate the capsule. EnteraSense will move towards ‘First in Human’ studies by Q3 2019 and hope to be commercial with FDA and CE approval by mid 2020.

The two-year, H2020 EIC-FTI project grant – valued at €3.55 million – is spread across four parties, with EnteraSense leading the research. Anecto, also based in Galway, Poland and a hospital in the Czech Republic are the other members of the project, which is expected to launch for patient use by the middle of 2020.

EnteraSense’s investor base includes physicians from the USA, a private equity fund based in Ireland, a Dubai-based strategic investor and local Galway business people.

Donal Devery, founder of EnteraSense: “We want to improve patient outcomes and drive cost down for the health system. Each process and function within the deliverables associated with the grant will help us achieve this goal.

“The fact that physicians are among our investors shows just how exciting EnteraSense’s product is. The EU’s backing only underlines that.”

TechCentral Reporters

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