OxSonics Limited Secures £2.1m Biomedical Catalyst Award
Oxford, UK – 16 June 2014 OxSonics Limited (“OxSonics”), a University of Oxford spin-out company developing a new generation of ultrasound-based medical devices, today announced it has successfully secured a major £2.1 million Biomedical Catalyst award from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board.
OxSonics was established in July 2013 to develop and commercialise a range of medical devices including “SonoTran”, an innovative drug delivery platform. SonoTran has the capability to overcome one of the greatest challenges facing solid tumour cancer therapy by delivering drugs throughout tumour volumes including to those areas that lie farthest from blood vessels. Not only can SonoTran be applied to any oncological drug class, it also provides on-screen feedback to the clinician as to where and when successful drug delivery has taken place, maximising its therapeutic potential by ensuring complete tumour coverage.
The Biomedical Catalyst award will fund development of the SonoTran platform into clinical trials.
Dr Colin Story, Chief Executive Officer of OxSonics commented: “The opportunity provided by this award, to advance an innovative engineering solution to address one of cancers greatest challenges, is tremendously exciting. Studies have shown that some drugs only reach 30 – 40% of solid tumours. SonoTran provides us with the potential to deliver a drug to the entire tumour volume, and ensure that this has been achieved, by monitoring its delivery in real-time. SonoTran has the capability to take approved drugs or those in clinical development and make them better, much better. Our mission is to provide economic and scalable life-changing treatments to solid tumour cancer patients.”
Coupled with OxSonics initial financing of £2.7m in January 2014, the company has now raised a total of £4.8 million.
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About OxSonics Limited
OxSonics was established in July 2013 to develop and commercialise ground-breaking advancements in the field of therapeutic ultrasound invented at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering. OxSonics “SonoTran” drug delivery platform has the capability to overcome one of the greatest challenges facing solid tumour cancer therapy by delivering drugs throughout tumours, including to the areas that lie furthest from blood vessels. SonoTran can be applied to any cancer drug. A major benefit of OxSonics’ technology is the ability to provide real-time on-screen feedback to the clinician as to where and when drug delivery is taking place. OxSonics is based in Oxford, UK. For more information please visit: www.oxsonics.com.
About The Technology Strategy Board
The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy.
For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org.
About the Biomedical Catalyst
Catalysts are run jointly by the Technology Strategy Board and the Research Councils. A Catalyst is a form of research and development funding which focuses on a specific priority area and aims to help take projects from research to as close to commercial viability as possible. The Catalyst model supports projects in priority areas where the UK research base has a leading position and where there is clear commercial potential. Current Catalysts include: Biomedical Catalyst, Agri-tech Catalyst and the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst.
For more details please visit: https://www.innovateuk.org/-/catalysts.
