FlexDex Surgical said today that it raised a $5 million Series B round it plans to use to advance the laparoscopic surgery tools it’s developing.
The round was led by current investors, including co-founders technology chief Shorya Awtar, chief marketing officer Greg Bowles and Dr. James Geiger of the University of Michigan; plus board members, individual backers and distributors, Brighton, Mich.-based FlexDex said.
The proceeds are earmarked for commercializing the FlexDex needle driver and for the development of a second-generation device. The company said it also plans to use the cash to develop a catalog of laparoscopic instruments.
“We are very pleased to have so many successful business leaders and healthcare professionals participate in our financing,” chairman & CEO Tom Davison said in prepared remarks. “This financing will support our goal to provide enhanced dexterity instruments to every surgeon, in every operating room all over the world at an affordable cost.”
Awtar, Bowles and Geiger founded FlexDex in 2014 to commercialize technology they developed at UMich, based on their research into parallel kinematics, virtual center of rotation, and flexure mechanisms at the school’s Precision Systems Design Lab, according to the company’s website. The goal is a line of instruments with intuitive, 0ne-to-one mapping of the surgeon’s movements that are more precise and cause less fatigue than older technologies.
The platform is built on the “Virtual Center” mechanical design the trio developed.
