Sanovas seeks $25 million as it gears up to go commercial

November 13, 2012 by Brad Perriello

Most startup medical device companies raise 10s of millions to research and develop their products before they even get to the commercial stage. But for Sanovas and co-founder Larry Gerrans, the 12-year journey to that point required a scant $9 million – all raised from the pulmonary device firm's founders, friends and family, Gerrans told MassDevice.com last month.

"We've built the company with significant fiscal constraint. We've been very engineering-eccentric. I've been everything you can imagine, I've been in intellectual property, I've been operations, been managing the engineers," Gerrans told us. "We've grown strong, we've not grown fast. We've really paid attention to what the physicians have been asking for, getting good strong feedback from them."

The Sanovas Vas Zeppelin device is more like 5 devices in 1, involving imaging, catheter-based access and intervention, "smart" technology and drug delivery – all on a scale small enough to fit into the 1mm to 3mm commonly found in the lungs outer reaches. It's designed to eliminate the need to crack open patients' chests to access the lungs – and the 7-day in-hospital recovery time for such procedures.

Sign up to get our free newsletters delivered straight to your inbox

Earlier this year Sanovas built out its Sausalito, Calif., headquarters to add administration and manufacturing space. Now, in anticipation of 510(k) clearance from the FDA, Sanovas is looking to drum up about $25 million to commercialize the Vas Zeppelin for the U.S. market, Gerrans told us at the AdvaMed 2012 convention in Boston in October. We asked Gerrans to bring us up to date on Sanovas, which we last profiled at AdvaMed 2011 in Washington last year.

MassDevice.com: In the year since we last spoke, Sanovas has focused on developing the engineering behind its technology. Can you bring us up to date on the company?

Permalink