FibroFind receives investment from Vespa Capital to accelerate growth plans
- Vespa Capital ›
- Vespa Capital Fibrofind
Vespa Capital is pleased to announce its investment into FibroFind, a globally recognised pre-clinical contract research organisation, revolutionising drug testing and pre-clinical research.
FibroFind has developed a unique, patented Precision Cut Tissue Slice (“PCTS”) platform, which produces a far greater degree of translational accuracy than existing in-vivo (animal) and in-vitro models by preserving the architecture and function of both diseased and healthy human tissue from a range of organs over a longer period. The more accurate data provided by the proprietary platform enables drug developers to make more informed decisions about the progress of their investigational products.
The company serves a rapidly growing global end market with increasing demand for higher quality ex-vivo PCTS testing models, supported by recent changes in regulation and an increasing evidence base driven by decades of academic research.
Incorporated as a spin-out from Newcastle University in 2019 by its founders, including Jelena Mann (CEO) and Lee Borthwick (CSO), FibroFind has leveraged the globally renowned academic and scientific expertise of the team to pursue pre-clinical research excellence and offer an extensive service to its pharma and biotech customers. Fibrofind operates from a strategically positioned, state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility which places the business at the forefront of the industry.
Together, Vespa Capital and FibroFind are partnering to advance the utility of the company’s PCTS platform into new tissue types, as well as to expand the potential use cases across both the pre-clinical testing and drug discovery offerings.
FibroFind was the recent winner of the Bionow Internationalisation Award.
Jelena Mann, CEO, commented that "partnering with Vespa Capital marks an exciting step in FibroFind’s growth journey. We are already seeing strong international demand for our platform, and this investment will allow us to scale further, broaden our reach across therapeutic areas, and deepen our impact in pre-clinical drug development. As regulatory and industry momentum continues to shift towards human-relevant models, we are ideally placed to help our clients make faster, more confident decisions with better data."
David Forbes, Partner at Vespa Capital, commented, “FibroFind is a unique and well-respected business with a strong reputation in an attractive and growing segment of the life science services sector. Jelena and Lee have built a platform which allows customers to either progress to the clinical trial phase with confidence, based on the superior translational accuracy of the pre-clinical data, or to save customers hundreds of millions of pounds in failed clinical trials. We are excited about the opportunity to extend the reach of the company as it seeks to revolutionise drug testing and pre-clinical research.”
Vespa Capital was advised by DLA Piper, Candesic, BDO, Lockton, EVMS and The Continuum. Debt facilities were provided by Santander.
FibroFind’s shareholders were advised by Grant Thornton and Mills & Reeve.