Micrima, the Bristol-based breast imaging company and developer of a radiowave breast imaging system, has closed on a new financing round of GBP2.6 million.
The new funding will support accelerated development of its patented MARIA technology, which aims to enable breast screening become safer, more comfortable and more accessible to a larger proportion of the global female population.
The company intends to start the commercialisation of its first system towards the end of this year.
“Breast cancer is the most common cause of death in women between the ages of 35 and 55 in Europe and the leading cause of death for women in many countries. The problem is that many tumours are not discovered early enough, largely due to the difficulty in discriminating between cancers and dense tissue using current imaging technology,” says Roy Johnson, Micrima’s executive chairman. “Using harmless radiowaves, the MARIA imaging system is capable of detecting tumours in dense tissue and allows routine and repeated scanning without any of the safety or comfort concerns associated with x-ray mammography. The process takes less than five minutes and avoids painful breast compression.”
Almost half of the new funds has come from pre-existing institutional and individual investors with the majority of the balance from new high net worth individuals; 50 per cent of the latter through the Venture Founders platform.
Re-investing shareholders include Technology Venture Partners, based at the Innovation Centre at Bristol & Bath Science Park; Swarraton Partners, a UK venture capital firm investing in European early stage technology companies; and the British Business Bank supported Angel CoFund.
The Parkwalk managed University of Bristol Enterprise Fund is a new investor.
The first clinical data from MARIA was presented at the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna earlier this year. The latest results from current multi-site clinical trials were presented at Symposium Mammographicum in Liverpool in July where, from over 90 papers accepted, Micrima’s was one of only four to receive an award from the organising committee. A paper reporting the pre-CE Mark clinical trial has also been accepted for publication by the Journal of Medical Imaging.
Dr Mike Shere of the Bristol Breast Care Centre says: “I was delighted to be able to present the latest sensitivity figures in Vienna. The presentation on MARIA was very well received, with the chair of the breast imaging session singling the work out and commenting on how he expected to see more about this very promising new modality over the coming years."
The company is making progress on the next version of the MARIA system, due to be released early next year, which will offer significantly enhanced functionality, including the ability to automatically distinguish between different types of lesion.
Tim Mills, investment director at the Angel CoFund, says: "We originally invested in Micrima because we knew we'd found an extremely capable team working with some very interesting technology in a sector with considerable opportunity for innovation. The team has really delivered on our expectation in the last couple of years and we're very happy to be supporting them again through this next phase of development."
