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A lot has changed since John Murphy, President and CEO of Virtual Incision, spoke with MD+DI in November 2020. The presidential election is about to end; the COVID-19 vaccine is about to receive emergency use authorization; and Lincoln, NE-based Virtual Incision has just received FDA approval for its surgical robot's IDE trial.
More than a year after these incidents, the company found itself in a leading position in the hot market with its miniaturized in-vivo robotic assistant (MIRA) surgical platform. Virtual Incision announced that it has raised $46 million in Series C financing through a combination of virtual meetings and face-to-face meetings.
This round of financing was led by Endeavor Vision and Baird Capital, and returned investors Bluestem Capital to participate.
"I can think of the funds being used in three main areas," Murphy told MD+DI. "The first aspect is clinical supervision; the second is the R&D pipeline, and the third you can imagine is around the team-so we will add a mix of engineers and clinical research lists, as well as add to our initial commercial team. These This is the main area we will be looking for throughout the next year."
Virtual Incision is trying to get indications for colon surgery first. If everything goes according to plan, the company will strive for other indications, including cholecystectomy, hysterectomy, sleeve gastrectomy, etc.
Dr. Shane Farritor, co-founder of Virtual Incision, said: "MIRA's ability to successfully perform colectomy-a challenging procedure in minimally invasive surgery that requires multi-quadrant anatomical access and powerful robotic power-proves the platform The great potential of the company and the Chief Technology Officer. "This financing milestone represents a step forward in our goal of providing miniaturized solutions for robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery, regardless of the location of care. "
For the hot surgical robot market, the past few months have been an extremely crazy journey. Dublin-based Medtronic started this work in October when its Hugo Robotic Assisted Surgery (RAS) system received the CE mark.
This is an important milestone for Hugo to go public and is a direct competitor of Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci robot-the technology has been relatively unchallenged since it was approved by the FDA in 2001.
However, Medtronic said in November that it had delayed the wider Hugo commercial launch due to some supply chain issues and some initial manufacturing issues.
After Medtronic announced that Hugo was delayed, Johnson & Johnson noticed that the Ottava robotic system was delayed for about two years.
In November last year, Vicarious Surgical submitted to the FDA a surgical robot pre-submitted to the FDA. The surgical robot combines a humanoid robotic arm with virtual reality technology to keep the market on fire.
Murphy talked about the current field of surgical robotics, and pointed out the difference between MIRA and why it can complement many current platforms.
"For the past 20 years, I have been a big fan of Intuitive's pioneering efforts," Murphy said. "The Da Vinci system is an incredible machine, but most new entrants are in mainframe mode-2000 pounds. Robots. We have been focusing on 2 pounds. Robots, mini robots. We are focusing on community hospitals. And the other 80% of operating rooms in rural environments. What we are trying to do now is to enable MIS in any environment. This has always been our mission."
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