MaxQ Medical has raised $31.5m to advance its ultrasound imaging and targeted therapy system for prostate care.
The California-headquartered company’s Series A financing round was led by led by Olympus Innovation Ventures, Atlantic Blue Ventures, and S3 Ventures. Existing investor Hillside Capital also participated.
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MaxQ intends to deploy the proceeds towards growing its team and advancing clinical programmes surrounding its namesake prostate care platform that combines advanced imaging with tissue-selective therapy in a single transurethral procedure.
The first focus for the privately held company’s platform is benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), a condition that makes it difficult for men to urinate. An estimated 40 million men in the US are affected by BPH, or enlarged prostate, according to the Urology Care Foundation.
With a combined platform approach, MaxQ aims to provide urologists with full visibility inside the prostate and the ability to treat what they see without the anatomic limitations of approaches that work from outside of the prostate.
The design of MaxQ’s platform is intended to preserve the urethra and minimise side effects such as injury, swelling and bleeding, and impact on sexual functions which “remain common concerns with current treatment options” for prostate care, the company stated.
The historical surgical gold standard for the BPH is transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP), a procedure that involves the insertion of a specialised instrument through the urethra to surgically remove excess inner prostate tissue to widen the urinary channel.
Minimally invasive procedures to address BPH, meanwhile, include Boston Scientific’s Rezūm therapy that uses water vapour to reduce excess prostate tissue volume.
Beyond its initial focus, MaxQ has plans to expand into focal therapy for prostate cancer and, in the longer term, broader prostate diagnostics including biopsy and tumour mapping.
Amir Tehrani, CEO of MaxQ Medical, commented: “Men with prostate disease have had to choose between treatments that don’t do enough and treatments that come with consequential trade-offs and side effects. The MaxQ system is designed to offer the durability of gold standard resective therapies with side-effects more comparable to transurethral minimally invasive surgery (tMIS) solutions.
“This funding lets us continue the clinical evaluations already underway and move closer to giving physicians and their patients a better option.”
