OrthoMimetics (Cambridge, UK) Raises £5m Series A Investment

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Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Cambridge, United Kingdom, 5 December 2006 – OrthoMimetics Limited (www.orthomimetics.com), the first technology spin-out from the Cambridge-MIT Institute, has completed a Series A funding round totalling £5.0m ($9.6m) net of costs. Led by Founder & CEO Dr. Andrew Lynn, a team of surgeons, scientists and engineers from the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) established OrthoMimetics to bring to market a revolutionary medical-device technology with the potential to help reduce the need for joint-replacement surgery.

This financing round, which was managed by independent stock-broking and wealth-management group Eden Financial, was supported by a syndicate of blue-chip investors including Schroders Investment Management Limited, Oxford Capital Partners and Sloane Robinson Private Equity (SRPE) and a group of private investors of Eden Financial.

The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) is a joint venture between two world-class universities, located in Cambridge, England and Cambridge, Massachusetts, respectively. OrthoMimetics, whose early-stage development was funded by CMI, is based in Cambridge, UK, and will continue the valuable collaborations established under CMI while establishing new relationships with key commercial partners.

Commenting on the financing, Dr. Andrew Lynn, CEO of OrthoMimetics said: “Closure of this funding round provides OrthoMimetics with a sound financial basis to move forward swiftly with its development program to bring the first of its products through clinical trials to CE-mark approval. We are delighted to welcome on board such a high-quality consortium of investors, and look forward to bringing to market a line of products that adds value for our shareholders and addresses the needs of surgeons, healthcare insurers and patients worldwide.”

Dr. Martin Hall, Senior Healthcare Analyst at Eden, joins the OrthoMimetics Board representing the investor consortium. He says: “We are delighted to be joining an organisation with such a strong pedigree. The depth of OrthoMimetics’ technology platform and the strength of its preclinical data are impressive, and place the Company in a very strong position to become a significant player in the market for off-the-shelf treatments for sports injuries, trauma and early osteoarthritis.”

Completion of this funding round will enable OrthoMimetics to advance the first two products derived from its orthobiologics scaffold platform towards market approval. ChondroMimetic, the Company’s flagship product for cartilage repair, and LigaMimetic, OM’s pipeline product for ligament repair, address a combined global market in excess of $1bn per annum. In contrast to drugs, hormones and other pharmaceutical products, OM’s medical-device technology offers what the company believes is an effective, low-risk treatment option that is capable of rapid progression through the regulatory process.

Of OrthoMimetics’ flagship product, ChondroMimetic, respected orthopaedic surgeon and researcher Professor Neil Rushton MD FRCS (University of Cambridge Orthopaedic Research Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital) observes: “One of the most sensible things about this product is that it works to improve procedures with which surgeons are already familiar and use regularly. That makes it very easy to understand how it will improve the standard of available treatment. This product clearly has the potential to help a lot of people.”

Drawing on a proprietary technology platform, OrthoMimetics’ line of porous, multi-layered tissue-regeneration scaffolds support the separate – yet simultaneous – regeneration of multiple tissue types, helping to repair damage to cartilage, ligaments or tendons and the bone that anchors these tissues in place. By guiding and supporting the body’s natural repair mechanisms, these off-the-shelf products help surgeons to treat damage before it causes more widespread degeneration, allowing patients to either delay joint replacement surgery or avoid it altogether. Joint replacements typically last roughly 15 years before the implants fail. While this is likely to be sufficient for patients in their seventies and eighties to live out a healthy, pain-free life, those receiving their first implant in their forties and fifties must face the prospect of one or sometimes several more painful operations to repair their damaged implants. More than 2 million joints replacements are performed at a cost of over $30bn each year worldwide.

Following completion of this investment round, Dr. Martin Hall and Ms. Heidi Hsueh, Managing Partner of SRPE, will join Dr. Andrew Lynn (CEO), Dr. Bill Mason (Chairman), Mr. Max Dyer Bartlett (Chief Financial Officer) and Professor William Bonfield CBE FREng FRS (Non-Executive Director) on the Board.

Dr. Mason is Director of a number of public and private healthcare and life-science companies in the UK and US, including The Sage Group and NASDAQ-listed Amarin Pharmaceuticals. Max Dyer Bartlett is Chairman of York Pharma PLC and acts as Non-Executive Director of a number of healthcare businesses in the UK. Professor Bonfield, University of Cambridge, has served on the Board of Directors and/or Scientific Advisory Board for a number of medical-device companies, and is Founder of Apatech Limited.

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Andrew Lynn OrthoMimetics Ltd.
William Gates Building
J.J. Thomson Avenue
Cambridge CB3 0FD
United Kingdom
Email: info@orthomimetics.com
Tel: +44 7944 248150
Fax: +44 (0)1223 763756
Website: www.orthomimetics.com

Editor’s Notes

Formed in 2005 as the first spin-out venture from the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), OrthoMimetics (OM) is bringing to market a line of off-the-shelf medical-device products that the Company believes will improve the efficacy of first-line surgical procedures for the regenerative repair of defects in articular cartilage (ChondroMimetic), ligament (LigaMimetic), and tendon (TenoMimetic). Such defects are a major cause of the pathological degeneration that leads to joint replacement.

OrthoMimetics’ product pipeline is derived from a patent-protected technology platform that enables the scalable production of porous tissue-regeneration scaffolds that mimic the composition and structure of complex anatomical locations, including sites encompassing interfaces between hard and soft tissue types. These products work to support the body’s natural repair mechanisms and enable surgeons to improve the quality of tissue repair at the sites most relevant to orthopaedic surgery.

OM’s flagship product, ChondroMimetic, is an off-the-shelf medical-device product that works to improve the efficacy of existing first-line surgical procedures that recruit marrow-derived stem cells to the site of articular-cartilage injury. ChondroMimetic can be shaped with a scalpel, implanted without special tools, and bonds directly to the site of injury without sutures or glue. OrthoMimetics has successfully completed two preclinical trials of ChondroMimetic, the results from which will be published in peer-reviewed journals in 2007. A second product (LigaMimetic), addressing the market for donor-site repair during anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, will follow ChondroMimetic closely in OrthoMimetics’ development pipeline.

In addition to Dr. Andrew K. Lynn and Professor William Bonfield from the University of Cambridge, OrthoMimetics’ founder group also includes: rising academic star and MIT-graduate Dr. Brendan A. Harley, currently based at Children’s Hospital in Boston and soon to be joining the faculty of the University of Illinois; regenerative-medicine pioneer Professor Ioannis V. Yannas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and MIT Associate Provost and renowned materials-scientist Professor Lorna J. Gibson. OrthoMimetics founder group also benefited from inputs from world-renowned surgeons, scientists and engineers at Harvard University and the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Japan.

Founding support for OrthoMimetics was provided by Cambridge Enterprise, a division of the University of Cambridge that provides a comprehensive knowledge and technology commercialisation service for University staff and students, and the MIT Technology Licensing Office. Incubation support for OrthoMimetics was provided by Cambridge Enterprise and the Cambridge-MIT Institute.

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