Calla Lily Clinical Care Raises £2.3M to Advance Vaginal Drug Delivery for Gynaecological Conditions
December 20, 2024
Calla Lily Clinical Care, a UK medical technology company, has raised £2.3 million to develop its proprietary vaginal drug delivery technology for fertility and gynaecological applications. The company is engineering a delivery platform that improves how drugs are absorbed through the vaginal mucosa — a route that is clinically established for a range of fertility and gynaecological treatments but which currently relies on drug formulations and devices whose performance and patient experience leave meaningful room for improvement.
Vaginal drug delivery is used in a range of clinically significant applications: progesterone supplementation in IVF and early pregnancy to support implantation and reduce miscarriage risk, hormone therapy for conditions including endometriosis and menopausal symptoms, and local treatment of vaginal infections. The route has significant advantages over oral or injectable administration for these applications — avoiding first-pass hepatic metabolism, delivering drugs directly to target tissues, and in many cases producing fewer systemic side effects. However, current vaginal drug products face practical limitations: inconsistent absorption, discomfort or inconvenience that reduces patient adherence, and formulations that may not achieve optimal drug concentrations at the target site.
Calla Lily's platform is designed to address these limitations through improved drug formulation and delivery device design, increasing the efficiency of drug transfer across the vaginal mucosa and improving the consistency of absorption. Better drug delivery in fertility treatment has direct clinical implications: progesterone levels during the luteal phase of IVF cycles are directly correlated with implantation and pregnancy rates, and more reliable progesterone delivery could meaningfully improve outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of couples undergoing IVF treatment each year. In gynaecological applications, improved drug delivery can reduce the total dose required to achieve therapeutic effect, potentially reducing side effects and improving tolerability.
The funding will support the development of the delivery technology, preclinical and clinical validation programmes, and the regulatory work required to advance the platform towards clinical adoption.
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