Company name: Apnex Medical.
Industry: medical devices.
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota.
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Solution/product: The Apnex Hypoglossal Nerve Stimulation system is an implantable therapy able to detects the patient’s breathing pattern during sleep and provides mild electric pulses to the hypoglossal nerve that controls the muscles that keep airways open.
Money raised: $10 million in this round; more than $50 million in additional rounds previously, according to regulatory filings.
How it will be used: The money will fund the continuation of a randomized clinical study whose results are expected to support Apnex Medical’s premarket approval application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the implanted therapy.
Investors: New Enterprise Associates; previous investors are Domain Associates, Polaris Ventures and Michael Berman, a Minnesota-based medical device industry investor and serial entrepreneur.
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Management team: It appears that Charles McKhann is no longer CEO, based on the news release, which instead names Robert Atkinson, the founder of Apnex, as president and CEO. (However, the website still indicates that McKhann leads the company and a call and email to a spokeswoman was not immediately returned.) Other executives are Steve Bolea, vice president of R&D, and Ginny Kirby, vice president of clinical and regulatory affairs.
Market: Apnex has two main competitors. Inspire Medical Systems, based in Minnesota, has an implantable therapy that, like Apnex, targets the hypoglosssal nerve. ImThera Medical of San Diego also delivers neurostimulation like Apnex and Inspire, but it targets multiple muscles and nerves in the tongue. The Sleep Foundation estimates that 18 million people have sleep apnea in the U.S.
Apnex Medical, which is testing its implantable device to treat obstructive sleep apnea announced Monday that it has raised $10 million. Here are the details of the funding:
