30 Million Reasons why ProVerum is an Irish Success Story
17th January 2022
ProVerum Limited, a spin out of Trinity College Dublin, is an Irish medical device company developing a minimally invasive solution to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in the doctor’s office. The company has recently announced the closing of a €30 million Series A equity financing co-led by Gilde Healthcare Partners and Lightstone Ventures, with participation from existing investors, including Atlantic Bridge University Fund.
ProVerum was co-founded by Dr. Ríona Ní Ghriallais (pictured) and Dr. Conor Harkin back in 2016. The MedTech has developed a novel treatment solution for patients with symptomatic BPH designed to be safely and effectively performed in a doctor’s office setting in a simple procedure under local anaesthesia. The device, called ‘ProVee’, is a nitinol expander that gently re-shapes the enlarged prostate alleviating the symptoms caused by BPH. It can be deployed through a low profile, flexible, steerable delivery system with integrated imaging, which is the same size as the office-based endoscopes routinely used for diagnosing BPH, making the ProVee system an extremely patient-friendly BPH treatment solution.
In its first-in-human safety and feasibility study, at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, the ProVee system demonstrated very promising results. ProVee was successfully deployed in all study patients, all of whom showed immediate and durable improvement in BPH symptoms. There has been no device related serious adverse events (SAEs) in any subject through two years of follow up.
The Company received FDA IDE approval in December 2021 to commence its pivotal US trial. Funds from this Series A financing will be used to support the Company’s clinical programme and other operating activities in pursuit of regulatory approval for the ProVee system in Europe and the US. Concurrent with the Series A financing, Caroline Gaynor of Lightstone Ventures and Henry Zubaida of Gilde Healthcare Partners join the ProVerum Board of Directors. In conjunction with the closing of the Series A, the Company also announced the appointment of Dave Amerson as Chair of the Board of Directors.
