NEOS Surgery has been awarded an outright grant for 1.9 million Euro from the leading European programme for funding innovative SMEs, the EIC Accelerator of the European Innovation Council (EIC).
The funding will be dedicated to the clinical validation of the DISC care™ device, which has been designed based on NEOS Surgery’s know how in the field of neurosurgery to respond to an unmet medical need, lumbar disc herniation. Furthermore, this funding ensures that NEOS can raise a new round of additional private investment to help this technology reach European patients.
EIC Accelerator (previously the SME Instrument) is a competitive programme that selects the most innovative SMEs with a high growth potential to help them to develop and launch new disruptive products, services and business models to the market. The latest call for grants featured applications from more than 4,200 projects from 18 countries, of which only 38 received funding.
NEOS Surgery aims to finish the DISC care™ clinical trial in five Spanish university hospitals during 2021. Then, the company aims to enter into the regulatory phase in Europe and the United States and to start marketing the product in 2023.
“This grant awarded by the European Commission highlights the innovative nature and strong technological core of NEOS Surgery which was founded in the Eurecat and Tecnalia centres. This grant will undoubtedly provide key funding to accelerate the safety and efficacy of DISC care™. We are convinced that DISC care™ is a medical solution that will help to improve the quality of life for patients with herniated discs” states Lluís Chico, managing partner of NEOS Surgery, second vice-president of CataloniaBio & HealthTech and a member of the health engineering commission of the Official Association of Industrial Engineers in Catalonia (COEIC).
The company already has the Cranial LOOP™ and Cranial COVER™ devices on the market which are used to cover cranial surgery without the need for medical instruments. The company’s R&D pipeline, in addition to DISC care™, features another innovative device for heart surgery.
Avançsa, a company run by the Catalan Ministry of Enterprise and Knowledge that promotes industrial innovation, has recently joined NEOS as an investor.
