CroíValve secures $16M to advance heart valve treatment

EIT Health-supported start-up, CroíValve, has successfully closed a $16 million Series B funding round to further develop its innovative heart valve treatment technology.

Founded in 2016 by Dr. Lucy O’Keeffe, Dr. Martin Quinn, Dr. Paul Heneghan, and Prof. Bruce Murphy, this Dublin-based medtech company, a spin-out from Trinity College Dublin, has steadily gained recognition for its ground-breaking work pioneering a minimally invasive solution for tricuspid regurgitation (TR), a serious heart condition that affects millions of patients worldwide.

Tricuspid regurgitation occurs when the tricuspid valve in the heart does not close properly, allowing blood to flow backward and potentially leading to severe heart complications. CroíValve’s DUO^TM device offers a novel, minimally invasive approach to addressing this condition, providing an alternative to the traditional open-heart surgery, which is often not suitable for elderly patients.

CroíValve CEO, Dr. Lucy O’Keeffe, said: “Tricuspid regurgitation affects more than 4 million people in the US and Europe, and there are few treatment options today. After promising clinical outcomes with the DUO^TM System in our First in Man clinical study conducted in Europe, the TANDEM I study, I am excited to advance our experience in the US with the TANDEM II early feasibility clinical study.”

How EIT Health helped CroíValve

EIT Health has supported CroíValve’s journey since 2017 through various accelerator programmes, including the 2018 Headstart Funding Programme where CroíValve was one of the ten innovative healthcare start-ups in the UK and Ireland that received funding.

As well as funding, CroíValve has been introduced to multiple partners through the EIT Health network and this support has enabled CroíValve to reach critical milestones in its development, such as conducting extensive testing and validation of the device which is required to bring it to patients.

The company previously raised €8 million in a Series A funding round in 2022, led by the MedTech and Irrus Syndicates, and has received additional funding through grants and investments over the years.

This latest funding round was led, once again, by the MedTech and Irrus Syndicates, with participation from existing investors such as Ascentifi, Furthr, Broadview Ventures, Atlantic Bridge University Fund, Enterprise Ireland, Elkstone, and SOSV, as well as new investor IAG Capital Partners. The investment will be used to finance an early feasibility study in the United States, aimed at evaluating the safety and performance of CroíValve’s flagship product, the DUO^TM Coaptation Valve System, in treating TR. CroíValve’s research, development, and operations teams are based in Ireland, while its clinical and regulatory teams are located in the US, where the upcoming feasibility study will take place.

Dr. O’Keeffe said: “Our Series B fund raise enables us to execute our plan to help the millions of patients suffering from severe tricuspid valve disease through a novel transcatheter tricuspid treatment option designed to treat a broad patient population without the anatomic limitations and procedural complexity that is limiting scalability of today’s devices.”

Graham Armitage, Managing Director of EIT Health Ireland-UK, said, “CroíValve’s commitment to addressing unmet clinical needs through cutting-edge technology is commendable. We at EIT Health are proud to have supported CroíValve on their journey and are excited to see their progress as they move forward with this critical feasibility study.”

Watch our short Spotlight film to discover more about CroíValve.

If you are looking to scale your start-up, explore the opportunities and support available through EIT Health.