Ambitious medical devices firm Mainstay Medical raises €30m funding

Mainstay Medical — the Dublin-based medical devices firm — has raised a fresh €30m in funding via the placement of 2.3m new ordinary shares in the company.

The company, which took a dual sharelisting on Dublin’s ESM market and Paris’ Euronext exchange in 2014, has raised the money through European and North American institutional investors.

The proceeds of the raise will be used to fund Mainstay’s ongoing development of its ReActiv8 product, seen as a potential breakthrough treatment for chronic back pain.

The money will be used to support commercialisation of the product in the European market and to fund clinical trials in the US.

The company is close to launching its product in Germany and hopes to follow up with launches in other central European countries with similar reimbursement/payment systems.

Currently, the likes of the NHS in Britain and the big health insurers here don’t have plans to cover use of ReActiv8 in their payment plans, but the company is hopeful of a mainstream launch here in the future.

Mainstay is ready to proceed with clinical trials in the lucrative US market, but is still three years away from gaining commercial approval there.

The product is an implantable device, installed via a simple medical procedure, which can be activated twice daily to treat the condition.

Some 2m people globally suffer from chronic back pain.

Mainstay chief executive Peter Crosby said the latest fundraising round will allow it “to further progress towards our objectives of commercialisation of ReActiv8 in Europe and the US and help improve the lives of millions of people who suffer from chronic low back pain”.