Prothea Technologies Raises £10.3M Series A to Enable Lung Cancer Biopsy and Treatment in a Single Hospital Visit

April 9, 2024

Prothea Technologies, a medical technology spinout from the Universities of Edinburgh and Bath, has launched publicly with a €12 million (£10.3 million) Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Earlybird Venture Capital's health fund and Mérieux Equity Partners, with additional participation from NRW.BANK, the promotional bank of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh's in-house venture fund. The company is the result of more than a decade of collaborative optical fibre research between Edinburgh, Bath, Dundee, and Durham, supported over the years by UK Research and Innovation, the Wellcome Trust, CARB-X, and Cancer Research UK. CEO and Executive Chair is Crispin Simon, formerly President of the Endoscopy Division at Smith+Nephew, bringing deep medtech commercialisation experience to a company built on foundational academic science.

Lung cancer is the world's deadliest form of cancer, claiming more lives annually than breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined, and accounting for more than two million deaths per year. In the UK, it is the third most common cancer, and nine out of ten patients do not survive more than a decade. The standard diagnostic pathway — screening scan, followed by suspicious finding, followed by biopsy, followed by results, followed by treatment plan — is slow, can take weeks, and is frequently inaccurate: conventional biopsy tools struggle to distinguish between cancerous and benign tissue at the small lesion sizes where early intervention would be most impactful. Even after a confirmed diagnosis, the physical limitations of current interventional tools often mean that small peripheral lesions are not accessible for ablation, leaving patients with limited treatment options.

Prothea has developed two complementary devices to address both problems. The first is a real-time imaging catheter based on fibre-optic endoscopy and proprietary image-processing software that examines the molecular structure of lung lesions at the point of biopsy, providing live insight into whether tissue is cancerous before it is removed and analysed in a laboratory. The second is a laser ablation catheter that can destroy cancerous tissue immediately after diagnosis, enabling a complete see-and-treat procedure in a single hospital visit. Together, the devices aim to compress a process that currently spans weeks into a single procedure measured in minutes, with significant implications for patient outcomes, hospital capacity, and the cost of care.

The Series A capital will finance the company's first-in-human clinical trial for the imaging and biopsy device, with initiation of the first-in-human trial for the therapeutic ablation catheter also planned. The company has in-licensed key patents from both Edinburgh and Bath, and its CTO Dr Jim Stone from Bath's Department of Physics brings the fibre-optic fabrication expertise at the core of the technology platform. Chief Medical and Scientific Officer Professor Kev Dhaliwal, Chair of Molecular Imaging and Healthcare Technology at Edinburgh's Institute for Regeneration and Repair, brings clinical and scientific leadership developed over the decade of foundational research that led to the company's formation.

Earlybird partner Dr John Yianni described Prothea's approach as perfectly aligned with the fund's mission to advance patient outcomes, while Mérieux Equity Partners director Dr Yoann Bonnamour highlighted the platform's ability to give doctors molecular-level insight at the point of care. NRW.BANK's Dr Thomas Raueiser joins the board representing the German public promotional bank, whose involvement reflects the company's cross-border research heritage and its plans to pursue clinical validation across European markets. Simon expressed confidence that the combination of clinical team, technology innovations, and investor syndicate positioned Prothea to deliver meaningful change for lung cancer patients.

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