Touchstone Innovations invests £1.5m in Imperial College spin-out

AIM-listed investor Touchstone Innovations has provided £1.5m worth in seed money to Imperial College London spin-out Cardian, a medical products company.

Following the investment, Touchstone will hold a 53.7% stake in Cardian, comprising of founders equity and a 27.3% interest from investment.

Cardian was formed to commercialise an implantable device that improves the monitoring and treatment of cardiac failure patients, by providing automated, continuous wireless monitoring of blood pressure in the pulmonary artery.

Heart failure affects more than 500,000 people living in the UK, according to the British Heart Foundation.

The technology was developed by the Cardian’s co-founders Dr Christopher McLeod, Dr Mohammad Reza Bahmanyar, and Dr Longfang Zou of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College.

Dr McLeod has been appointed as a non-executive director of Cardian and has over 40 years' experience applying recent technology to non-invasive, minimally invasive and invasive patient monitoring, while newly appointed chief executive Sandeep Yadav was previously chief operating officer of Cardiomems, a pioneer of monitoring pulmonary arterial pressure, which was bought by St Jude Medical for $450m in 2014.

Dani Bach, director of healthcare ventures at Touchstone, said: "Our Technology Transfer Office, Imperial Innovations, has been supporting the founders for many years, working with the team on intellectual property protection and market evaluation, and helping to secure initial funding, which enabled them to develop prototypes in an academic setting.

"We are assembling a strong management team to commercialise this compelling technology, which combined with the expertise of the founding academics, gives us a great opportunity to help to create a new company that could significantly impact the lives of millions of sufferers of cardiac failure."

Shares in Touchstone Innovations were up 0.39% to 321.25p at 1028 BST.