Spiderwort, an Ottawa-based healthtech and biomaterials startup, has raised a seed round of funding at $3.4 million CAD ($2.5 million USD).
The round was led by Horizons Ventures, and “supported by a number of groups,” the company said, including the Capital Angel Network, Break Off Capital, Anges Québec, and a United States-based syndicate.
“We believe that our biomaterial has the potential to significantly change lives.”
The seed round follows shortly after Spiderwort announced a $500,000 CAD oversubscribed friends and family funding round. Spiderwort revealed the round in June. A Spiderwort spokesperson told BetaKit the seed financing “is in addition to the Friends and Family round.”
Spiderwort is developing a new biomaterial that uses plant-derived cellulose to create a variety of “scaffold architectures” for regenerative medicine. It is currently in the pre-clinical stage of this product. The startup plans to use the funding to continue its work towards clinical trials, which it called “key” to bringing its biomaterial to market.
“We believe that our biomaterial has the potential to significantly change lives and fundamentally transform multiple industries,” said Charles M. Cuerrier, CEO of Spiderwort. “We have a lot of hard work ahead, but we are confident that the results will speak for themselves.”
Spiderwort pointed to conditions such as spinal cord injury repair, soft tissue replacement and reconstruction, and cell and plant-based meats and food products, as potential applications for the technology.
The company recently moved into a new biotechnology research facility at Collège La Cité in Ottawa and noted that the development of its management team has been supported by the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Health stream in Vancouver. It is also currently part of the OBIO Capital Access Advisory Program in Toronto and the IO Accelerator at Invest Ottawa. Spiderwort said it has also received funding from the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI), the OCE, and the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).
As part of the seed round, Spiderwort is adding two new members to its board of directors: Dane Bedward, chairman and former president of Genzyme Canada, and Patrick Zhang of Horizons Ventures.
Image source OCE via Twitter