Touchstone Innovations PLC Innovations provides seed funding for Cardian

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Touchstone Innovations PLC

06 April 2017

RNS Reach

6 April 2017

Touchstone Innovations plc

Innovations provides GBP1.5m in seed funding for new Imperial College spin-out Cardian

Touchstone Innovations plc (AIM: IVO, 'the Group', 'Innovations') has provided GBP1.5 million seed investment round in Cardian Limited ('Cardian' or the 'Company') a new spin-out company from Imperial College London.

Cardian has been formed to commercialise a novel implantable device that improves the monitoring and treatment of cardiac failure patients, by providing completely automated, continuous wireless monitoring of blood pressure in the pulmonary artery.

Following this investment, Innovations will hold a 53.7% interest in the Company, comprising a combination of founders equity and 27.3% derived from investment.

Heart failure is a common and devastating chronic condition, that affects more than 500,000 people living in the UK (source: British Heart Foundation). Standard care is based on the fine-tuning of dosing of therapy according to patients' self-reported symptoms. This is extremely inaccurate and in many cases, leads to symptoms worsening, re-hospitalisation, impairment and ultimately death (50% mortality at five years after diagnosis).

Cardian has developed a fully implantable wireless pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) sensor which needs neither batteries nor a power line. The sensor is read by an external body-worn portable reader the size of a smartphone, in real time, 24/7. This allows the continuous monitoring of the pulmonary arterial pressure during daily activity, including during periods of exertion and stress (rather than lying in a hospital bed). This is significant because around half of all heart failure sufferers show no sign of PAP abnormalities at rest, and can therefore only be monitored with a truly continuous monitoring system. Cardian's products should therefore allow doctors to spot signals that existing technologies miss, further improving management of the condition, reducing hospitalisations and mortality rate.

The Company's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Sandeep Yadav was previously COO of Cardiomems, one of the pioneers of the monitoring of pulmonary arterial pressure. Cardiomems was acquired by St Jude Medical for a total $450.0 million in 2014.

The underlying technology was developed by the Company's co-founders Dr Christopher McLeod, Dr Mohammad Reza Bahmanyar, and Dr Longfang Zou of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College. Dr McLeod, who has been appointed as a non-executive director of Cardian, has over 40 years' experience applying the most recent technology to non-invasive, minimally invasive and invasive patient monitoring.

Dani Bach, Director of Healthcare Ventures, Touchstone Innovations, commented:

"This is a classic Imperial spin-out. The formation of Cardian capitalises on more than a decade of research from Chris McLeod's lab within the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College.

"Our Technology Transfer Office, Imperial Innovations, has been supporting the founders for many years, working with the team on IP protection and market evaluation, and helping to secure initial funding, which enabled them to develop prototypes in an academic setting.

"We are assembling a strong management team to commercialise this compelling technology, which combined with the expertise of the founding academics, gives us a great opportunity to help to create a new company that could significantly impact the lives of millions of sufferers of cardiac failure."

For further information contact:

 
                                                  020 3053 
  Touchstone Innovations plc                          8834 
  Russ Cummings, Chief Executive 
   Officer 
  Jon Davies, Director of Communications 
 
                                                  020 7457 
  Instinctif Partners                                 2020 
  Adrian Duffield/Melanie Toyne-Sewell/Chantal 
   Woolcock 
 
  J.P. Morgan Cazenove (Nominated                 020 7742 
   Adviser)                                           4000 
  Michael Wentworth-Stanley/Alec 
   Pratt 
 
                                                  020 7653 
   RBC Capital Markets                                4000 
  Darrell Uden/Marcus Jackson/Laura 
   White 
 

About Touchstone Innovations - www.touchstoneinnovations.com

Touchstone Innovations plc (formerly Imperial Innovations Group plc or just "Innovations") creates, builds and invests in pioneering technology companies and licensing opportunities developed from outstanding scientific research from the 'Golden Triangle', the geographical region broadly bounded by London, Cambridge and Oxford.

This area has an unrivalled cluster of outstanding academic research and technology businesses, and is home to four of the world's top 10 universities, as well as leading research institutions, the cream of the UK's science and technology businesses and many of its leading investors.

Innovations supports scientists and entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas through protecting and licensing out intellectual property (through its Technology Transfer subsidiary, Imperial Innovations), by leading the formation of new companies, by recruiting high calibre management teams and by providing investment and encouraging co-investment. Innovations remains an active investor over the life of its portfolio companies, with the majority of Innovations' investment going into businesses in which it is already a shareholder.

Since becoming a public company in 2006, Innovations has raised more than GBP440 million of equity from investors, which has enabled it to invest in some of the most exciting spin-outs to come out of UK academic research. In addition, the Group has agreed GBP80.0 million in loan facilities from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Between Innovations' admission to AIM (August 2006) and 31 January 2017, Innovations has invested a total of GBP335.7 million across its portfolio companies, which have collectively raised investment of GBP1.5 billion.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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April 06, 2017 02:01 ET (06:01 GMT)