Toronto-based medtech company MolecuLight has secured $27.5 million USD ($39.5 million CAD) in financing to expand its global footprint and introduce new features to its wound bacteria-detecting devices.
London, UK-based investment firm Hayfin Capital Management was the sole investor. MolecuLight did not respond to a request for comment about the financing breakdown, including primary and secondary capital or debt and equity components to the round.
Hayfin was majority-owned by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation up until 2024, when Arctos Partners helped the investment firm buy out a majority stake, according to its website. The firm has approximately 32 billion euros ($48 billion CAD) in assets under management.
The funding will help MolecuLight develop new features, such as thermal imaging and 3D wound visualization.
MolecuLight makes handheld, portable devices that use fluorescent light to identify and measure bacterial presence in wounds and surgical sites.
“This investment will enable us to accelerate our goal of improving how wounds are treated worldwide,” MolecuLight CEO Anil Amlani said in a statement.
Amlani added that the funding will allow MolecuLight to offer its wound management devices to more patients and healthcare professionals and help it develop new features, such as thermal imaging and 3D wound visualization.
The medtech startup most recently raised an $11.7-million CAD Series C round in August 2024, led by Crown corporation Export Development Canada, bringing its total funding to at least $60 million CAD, not including the undisclosed amount of funding from BDC Capital and iGan Ventures in 2022.
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The startup says its two handheld devices, the MolecuLight i:X and the MolecuLightDX, can both help assess wounds, clean and remove unhealthy tissue, and evaluate treatment effectiveness by measuring bacterial presence at every stage. The DX can integrate data into electronic medical records and comes equipped with an administrator workflow.
Using a MolecuLight device for wound treatment can shorten healing times, reduce the use of unnecessary antibiotics, and avoid complications related to infection, the company claims, without touching the patient’s skin.
The company also manufactures accessories for MolecuLight devices, such as wound stickers and a portable dark environment to increase the visibility of the fluorescent imaging.
MolecuLight was founded in 2012 by Ralph DaCosta, a Toronto-based research scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Health Canada authorized the sale of MolecuLight’s device in 2015, and the US Food and Drug Administration followed suit in 2019.
Competitors in the wound management care space include Toronto-based Swift Medical, which has started integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its software program to assess and treat wounds.
Feature image courtesy MolecuLight.