Oxford tech firm gets £1.5m Series A boost with London's Downing Ventures

Oxford’s The Electrospinning Company has received £1.5m funding led by London-based venture capital firm Downing Ventures.

The funding has been made available alongside VC firm MidVen, Newable Private Investing and the STFC.

The company uses ‘electrospinning’ tech to design, develop and manufacture biomaterials, known as ‘nanofibre scaffolds’. These are made from synthetic polymers that are implanted into the human body; aiming to help medical patients and procedures.

Ann Kramer, chief executive officer of the Electrospinning Company, said: “We are excited about the prospects this new investment will bring for what we believe are highly flexible and extremely beneficial medical products.

“We are at an important growth inflection point for our business, as we enhance our technology platform and capacity.”

Ann added: “The funding will help us maintain the highest possible standards as we grow sales of existing product, increase our customer offer and develop new biomaterials.

“The insight of Will Brooks and the team at Downing Ventures - in terms of their knowledge of the healthcare sector and their experience funding companies within it - gives us great confidence and we look forward to working with them.”

The ‘scaffolds’ are designed to mimic the body’s natural extracellular matrix, which exists to provide support and signalling to surrounding cells, and the biomaterials are tailored so that they degrade or reabsorb naturally once the patient has healed.

Tendon surgery is just one example where the company’s scaffold technology is being used in combination with traditional orthopaedic medical devices to improve the success rate of the medical procedure.

Following earlier work with the University of Sheffield and the LVPrasad eye clinic in India, the company has also initiated a new project to develop a synthetic membrane that resembles amniotic membrane.

Will Brooks, investment director at Downing Ventures, concluded: “The Electrospinning Company is a brilliant example of the type of innovative technology and team that has the potential to deliver the return on investment we are looking for on behalf of our investors.

“Their established track record in the US really stood out to us and we plan to use our own experience of the US market to help them expand further, as well as in other markets that they have not yet pushed into.”