CollPlant closes latest round totaling $8 million to fund its regenerative bioprinting
CollPlant, a regenerative medicine company utilizing its proprietary plant-based rhCollagen technology for tissue repair products (recombinant human, “rhCollagen”), has completed the third and final closing of the investment agreement with Alpha Capital Anstalt.
Yehiel Tal, Chief Financial Officer: “With this last phase of investment, we are concluding a series of rounds of financing over the past seven months in CollPlant totaling approximately $8 million. These rounds were participated in by Alpha and our largest shareholders. The main use of proceeds of these funds was for the establishment of a new cGMP production facility in Israel, the investment in the development projects that we have with 3D bio-printing of tissues and organs, R&D, sales and marketing and working capital and general corporate purposes.”
Recently, 3D bioprinting has been gaining momentum in many medicinal applications to address the need for complex scaffolds, tissues and organs suitable for transplantation and tissue modeling. For that purpose, CollPlant’s rhCollagen was modified chemically to adapt the biological molecules for printing, such that the BioInk maintains controlled fluidity during printing, and cures to form hydrogel when irradiated by light ranging from UV to visible light.
The unique viscosity and shear thinning properties of the modified rhCollagen allow the flexibility to easily formulate BioInks for different printing technologies including extrusion, ink-jet, Laser Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) and Stereolithography. The control of chemical modification in combination with illumination energy allows tight control on the physical properties of the resulting scaffolds to match natural tissues properties, from stiff cartilage to soft adipose.
BioInks formulated from rhCollagen were evaluated with all major printing technologies and exhibited the required physical properties as well as excellent support for cells including a series of primary and differentiated human cells. In conclusion, rhCollagen BioInk formulations provide a superior solution for 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs.
At the third closing, the Company issued to Alpha a pre-paid warrant to purchase up to 9,921,482 ordinary shares represented by 198,430 American Depositary Shares (ADSs) and a warrant to purchase up to 49,607,407 ordinary shares represented by 992,149 ADSs, at an exercise price of NIS 36.14 per ADS ($10.07 per ADS), for gross proceeds of $1 million.
