Medical technology company MediSieve has been awarded £150,000 by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) to perform clinical studies of its magnetic blood filtration device.
Clinical trial
The company is best known for developing a magnetic drug-free malaria treatment that could potentially be used to treat other blood-borne diseases such as sepsis and leukaemia.
The grant comes as part of the i4i Connect scheme, developed as part of the UK government’s Accelerated Access Programme to fund promising medical research.
MediSieve will use the funding to perform the first human testing of the device at a hospital in London. The company hopes that after the safety of the device has been assessed it will gain extra funding to accelerate its development pathway.
The company’s device uses magnets to exploit the body’s cells’ naturally occurring magnetic properties. The device filters the malaria infected cells directly from a patient’s blood before the clean blood re-enters their system.
MediSieve is also developed magnetic particles which bind to specific targets in the bloodstream, enabling its magnetic blood filtration technology to be expanded to treat a far greater range of diseases.
George Frodsham, founder and CEO of MediSieve, said: "It's absolutely fantastic to be awarded this grant from the NIHR, which will provide £150,000 of invaluable funding crucial to our work. First-in-man clinical studies are a huge milestone for any new medical technology, and we’re really excited to be able to take this step and move closer to our goal of providing doctor’s with a tool with which to clean blood and treat all sorts of blood-borne diseases”.
Martin Hunt, NIHR i4i programme director, said: "SMEs have told us that there is a gap in funding both in the early stage of development and for completed projects that do not have all the data to effectively access the follow-on funding marketplace. i4i Connect will support teams through either of these stages of development with a fast turnaround of funding - vital for SMEs needing to maintain momentum."