£630k grant for medical start-up in bid to treat aggressive brain tumours

A Manchester medical device start-up has received a £630,000 grant to advance its technology aimed at treating aggressive brain tumours.

QV Biolectronics has been awarded the funding under the Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst.

It follows the completion of a significantly oversubscribed seed round, worth £735,000, in July 2021, which attracted support from Consilience Ventures, SOSV, the GM & Cheshire Life Sciences Fund, managed by Catapult Ventures, and several angel investors.

QV Bioelectronics is developing a first-of-its-kind electrotherapy implant, QV-GRACE, for the treatment of the most common and aggressive type of brain tumours

This latest award takes the grant funding total awarded to QV Bioelectronics to £1m, which includes previous awards from Innovate UK SMART and the National Institute for Health Research.

QV Bioelectronics is led and co-founded by Dr Christopher Bullock (CEO), alongside Mr Richard Fu, co-founder and clinical director, an academic neurosurgeon.

They are backed by an expert team of engineers and scientists who have been working closely with some of the UK’s leading neurosurgeons on the prototype design of the GRACE device.

QV Bioelectronics is determined to deliver longer and a better quality life for brain tumour patients. It is hoped that GRACE will provide a paradigm shift in the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM), the most common form of primary brain cancer in adults that has amongst the worst outcomes of any type of cancer.

Utilising advanced materials, the technology underpinning the GRACE device is designed to significantly extend patient life expectancy without negatively affecting patient quality of life.

GRACE is still at an early stage of development, and it will be several years before the technology is ready to enter clinical trials.

Dr Bullock said: “This significant funding from Innovate UK will support preclinical studies of QV Bioelectronics’ GRACE device, enabling us to take several big strides forwards towards human clinical trials. The highly competitive nature of the grants, with rigorous technical assessment, de-risks follow on venture capital investment.”