Pennsylvania's Intact Vascular closed a $15.5 million Series A round, money the company will use to market its Tack-It endovascular stapler system for peripheral artery disease.
The device is a permanent catheter implant with four self-expanding tacks, designed to optimize angioplasty by creating tissue apposition to smooth the arterial lumen. The device got its CE mark in April, and Intact says it will use the $15.5 million to complete a multi-center trial on up to 138 subjects, testing the device for use in the superficial femoral and popliteal arteries after angioplasty.
Quaker Partners and H.I.G. BioVentures co-led the round, joined by some of Intact's past investors, and company CEO Carol Burns said Intact is "thrilled to have the financial backing of blue-chip investors."
About 8 million people suffer from peripheral artery disease in their lower extremities, Intact says, and balloon angioplasty, the most commonly performed peripheral intervention to improve blood flow, can result in adverse events for patients. Intact says its device presents a viable alternative with less foreign material in the artery, lower risk of long-term injury and the ability to perform spot treatment to the vessel only where needed.
"We need to improve the results of a balloon angioplasty, but right now all we can do is stent," Intact co-founder and CMO Peter Schneider said in a statement. "It is just too much metal, too much stiffening of the artery and is associated with too many downstream problems, like restenosis and fracture. We believe the Tack-It technology will offer a new solution to address this problem."
- check out Intact's statement