14th November 2007
CAT.101
CATAPULT BACKS COMPANY DEVELOPING
REVOLUTONARY CANCER TECHNOLGY
The Birmingham office of Catapult Venture Managers has invested £250,000 into Michelson Diagnostics Ltd (MDL), a company that is developing pioneering technology for cancer diagnosis and treatment.
MDL has raised a total of £600,000 in this investment round of early stage funding, with the remaining financial backing coming from London Seed Capital and London Business Angels.
The company, which has offices in Kent and the West Midlands, was founded in 2006 by Jon Holmes and four other ex-employees of Sira, the photonics instrumentation company.
Its innovative, next generation imaging technology, addresses the key need for clinicians to see, during an operation and in real time, the location and extent of a tumour, for a range of cancer types. The equipment will enable faster, more accurate cancer surgery, with major benefits for both the patient and clinician – removing the slow, painstaking process of taking multiple samples of tissue for analysis.
Julie Newman, who heads-up the West Midlands based £20 million Advantage Enterprise and Innovation Fund (AEIF) managed by Catapult, commented: “MDL has a very strong and commercially astute management team led by founder and CEO Jon Holmes.
“The technology that MDL is developing is very exciting and the impact it will have on the diagnosis, treatment and post-operative monitoring of cancer patients should prove to be immense. “
“From the patient’s point of view, the technology will greatly decrease the probability of a recurrence of the disease – surgeons will be able to excise all traces of the tumour. This means that the scanners will significantly reduce operating time (and hence cost) and, in due course, could eliminate the need for biopsies.”
Ex-vivo clinical testing at University College London Hospital and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital has already demonstrated the huge potential for this new technology.
Jon Holmes, CEO and founder of MDL, commented: “This funding will enable us to continue the development of our Optical Coherent Tomography technology and demonstrate its potential to solve significant unmet medical needs in multi-billion pound markets worldwide.
“We are tremendously excited by the confidence shown in Michelson Diagnostics by our new investors, Catapult Venture Managers, London Seed Capital and London Business Angels.”
Concluded Julie Newman: “The potential for this market is immense. For example, if one scanner were allocated to each cancer surgery theatre in 50,000 hospitals worldwide, potential sales are around £2.5bn. The total medical imaging market is estimated to be around £50bn.
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For further information please contact Julie Newman on 0870 116 3000 or Paul Shrimpton at PSPR Ltd on 0121 354 7311 or 07979 505322.
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