ABK Biomedical late last year raised US$35 million (C$47.9 million) in a Series D financing round to support clinical trials, manufacturing expansion and development of a product to be used in treating liver cancer.
The Halifax-based medical device company said the oversubscribed round was led by J.P. Morgan Life Sciences Private Capital, investing in the company for the first time. Existing investors, including F-Prime Capital, Santé Ventures, Eight Roads Ventures and an undisclosed medical device company, also participated. (ABK put out a press release with little fanfare in October, and the deal came to Entrevestor’s attention only when the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association released its fourth-quarter data this week.)
A stalwart of the Halifax life sciences community, ABK Biomedical has been one of the most successful companies in the region at attracting venture capital. It previously closed rounds worth US$30 million in both 2022 and 2019, and C$9 million in 2017.
“We have been extremely impressed with the progress ABK Biomedical has made dating back to its Series B funding round in 2019,” said J.P. Morgan Life Sciences Managing Partner Joe Siletto in the press release. “ABK’s development of Eye90 microspheres has been recognized by the FDA as a Breakthrough Device Designation, having the potential to more effectively treat life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions.”
The Series D funding will primarily support ongoing clinical trials and manufacturing scale-up for the company’s Eye90 microspheres, a treatment designed for liver cancer. ABK Biomedical is currently conducting a pivotal clinical trial, known as Route90, to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the device. The product has received Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a status intended to speed development and review of technologies that could provide significant improvements over existing treatments.
Eye90 microspheres are tiny beads made from an inorganic material that can be seen clearly in medical imaging. They are delivered through a thin tube, or catheter, into blood vessels that feed a tumour in the liver. Once in place, the beads serve two purposes: they block the tumour’s blood supply and deliver radiation directly to cancer cells.
This approach, known as radioembolization, allows doctors to target tumours more precisely than conventional radiation therapy, which exposes larger areas of the body. By concentrating treatment within the tumour, the technique is intended to reduce damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
ABK Biomedical said the new funding will also help expand its manufacturing and supply chain operations in preparation for possible commercialization, depending on regulatory approval. Eye90 microspheres remain an investigational product and are not yet approved for general clinical use.
ABK was founded in 2012 by a team of Dalhousie University researchers Robert Abraham, MD, Daniel Boyd, and Sharon Kehoe. It now operates its own research, development and manufacturing facilities and holds intellectual property related to the microspheres and their delivery systems.
It is also the flagship for a cluster of companies associated with its founders that includes IR Scientific and ClearDynamic.
“Our ABK team is a best-in-class organization and continues to achieve our product development goals for our embolic platforms while executing our FDA IDE pivotal trial,” said CEO Mike Mangano. “Our Route90 PIs, investigators, and research support staff are conducting the study with exceptional rigor, in what we feel will be one of the most robust data sets ever completed within the Interventional Oncology subspecialty.”
