ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Nectero Medical is developing a new endovascular treatment for the one million patients diagnosed with mid-sized abdominal aortic aneurysms. Although the risk of rupture is low for this patient group, they carry up to an 8% cumulative risk of a potentially fatal rupture before they reach a point where they are eligible for surgical repair, yet they have no other treatment options.
Aortic aneurysm repair company Nectero Medical recently raised $19.5 million in a Series C round led by Boston Scientific Corp. to fund additional preclinical work and complete its multisite Phase I safety study. CEO Jack Springer says, “It’s a nice validation on a journey that has demonstrated both the tenacity and creativity needed to bring a fundamentally disruptive medical technology to market.”
Nectero was founded in 2017, as a restart of Vatrix Medical, to carry on translational work that its predecessor had undertaken years before for a new approach to the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) disease. But with more than a decade behind it, you might say Nectero’s history is more saga than start-up story. The company set out with a vision of a new treatment paradigm when conventional wisdom said the problem was solved, and its tale is one of the road less travelled. Nectero traversed the financing valley of death, confronted COVID, forged important alliances, and surmounted many obstacles on its quest.
Now, with clinical studies underway, Nectero’s goal is within sight at a time when an understanding of the drawbacks of current treatments for AAA disease makes its product even more attractive than it was when it was first conceived.
