Innovative medtech spin-out raises $142m for US expansion
LOS ANGELES: A University spin-out that has developed intensive care units for liver transplants has raised $142 million from investors to help it expand in America before a potential stock market listing.
OrganOx, whose technology sustains donated organs using blood at normal body temperatures, has sold shares to the US venture capital firm HealthQuest Capital and three other new investors, as well as its existing backers BGF and Lauxera Capital Partners.
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Oern Stuge, OrganOx’s non-executive chairman and a former senior executive at the medical devices manufacturer Medtronic, said the company could see significant opportunities for further growth. “Organ disease and failure represent a large unmet need in healthcare,” he said.
According to its latest available accounts, OrganOx made pre-tax profits of £3.4 million in the last eight months of 2023, before receiving a £5.2 million tax credit, on revenues of £19.8 million. OrganOx said it had only reported eight months of trading as it had changed its financial year end to position it better “for a potential public listing in the future”. It is understood that the company achieved sales of around £55 million in 2024.
The devices made by OrganOx, which has offices in Oxford and Madison, New Jersey, are based on technology invented by Peter Friend, professor of transplantation at Oxford University, and further developed by Constantin Coussios, professor of biomedical engineering at the university.
They set up the company in 2008, produced its first prototype in 2014 and secured approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the American public health regulator, in 2021. The technology has been used in more than 5,000 transplant operations.
Since 2017 Craig Marshall, a former Siemens senior executive, has led the company. It has clinical trials planned for new devices to support kidney transplants as well as the use of genetically engineered pig livers in patients with acute liver failure.
BGF, a UK investor backed by five of the main banks, is the largest single institutional shareholder in the company, having invested £34.5 million across six rounds of investment since 2019.
Tim Rea, BGF’s co-head of early stage company investment, said OrganOx’s performance had been “tremendous” and showed what could be achieved with medical expertise in the UK if those ideas were backed with sufficient capital.
He added: “There is a critical lack of informed support for early-stage businesses generally and the gap is particularly acute in categories like medtech, where it is hard to name a single specialist investor in the UK. If we want to see more companies in the government’s key industrial sectors thrive, this is the funding gap that must be addressed.”