Spirox, a Menlo Park, CA-based medical device company, has raised $18.5 million to commercialize a device meant to make a portion of surgeries that repair nasal obstructions less invasive.
The company raised the Series B round from East Coast venture capital firms Venrock and Aisling Capital, as well as existing investors Aperture Venture Partners, Correlation Ventures, and Western Technology Investment. The company plans to use the funding to complete a clinical trial, ask the FDA for marketing approval in the U.S., and begin product commercialization, Spirox said in a statement.
Spirox intends its device to be used by ear, nose and throat (ENT) physicians and plastic surgeons who perform operations such as treating a deviated septum with a septoplasty or reducing the size of the inferior turbinate, a large vascular structure that runs the length of the nasal passage.
Spirox’s device would ensure that cartilage on the side of the nose—the lateral wall—is supported during and after those procedures or if a patient otherwise experiences nasal valve collapse, says chief medical officer and co-founder Donald Gonzales. That wall easily can collapse and bow in; Spirox, founded in 2011, has made an absorbable, minimally invasive device that supports the wall and prevents that, Gonzales said. He declined to provide further details on how the device is implanted in patients.
“This is a very exciting—a completely underserved—market that has been overlooked in the ENT space,” Gonzales says.
While nasal valve collapse is common, existing treatments such as batten grafts can be difficult to perform and time-consuming, Gonzales says. He declined to provide details on how or why the company’s device will be safer or easier to use, noting that it is minimally invasive.
Patients have almost 1 million surgeries to alleviate nasal obstruction annually, the company said in a statement. Spirox, which changed its name from Nasoform, had previously received $6.2 million in equity financing in 2013, according to a regulatory filing.
