A Lanarkshire firm that has developed contact lenses which it reckons can help users avoid suffering irritations such as dryness of the eye has won £1.4 million backing from investors.
Ocutec raised the funding in a round that was supported by Intuitive Investments Group, which is led by veterans of the Scottish life sciences industry.
The funding round provides a vote of confidence in Bellshill-based Ocutec and its soft contact lenses, which the company describes as ‘highly biocompatible’.
“An ideal contact lens material should be highly wettable, biocompatible with ocular tissues, resist dehydration, and promote healthy oxygen flow to the cornea,” says Ocutec on its website.
“The chemical compound Polyethylene Glycol used in our materials and contact lenses can deliver on all these features.”
Ocutec has spent years working on its technology, since being spun out of the University of Strathclyde in 2006.
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Stewart White, who is on IIG’s advisory panel and is consulting chief executive at Ocutec, said the company has lots of good technology covering lenses, solutions and manufacturing processes. It has a range of patents registered in attractive markets.
Ocutec’s finance director Scott Carnegie said the company would use the funds raised in the latest round to invest in new equipment and processes and “several new scientific and engineering hires”. He said this would help the company to further develop its technology for making and bringing to market a new family of contact lenses.
Other Scottish firms have made a big impact on the market. Ron Hamilton founded the Daysoft business after netting around £16m by selling his Award disposable lens operation to sector giant Bausch & Lomb in 1996.
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Intuitive Investments Group provided £250,000 of the funding raised by Ocutec in the latest round.
The Aim market-listed investment firms’s executive chairman David Evans is a former chairman of the Glasgow-based Collagen Solutions biomaterials business, which was acquired by US group Rosen’s Diversified in 2020. Mr Evans also served as chairman of the Omega Diagnostics medical testing business and led the Shield diagnostics operation which merged with Norway’s Axis in 1999.
Mr White was founding chief executive of Collagen Solutions.
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Intuitive Investments Group floated on the Aim market in December 2020. It has invested in 15 firms, including Scottish digital health platform business Pneumowave, which was formerly known as Altair Medical.
Intuitive Investments’s non-executive director Malcolm Gillies has served on the boards of a range of life sciences firms including Axis-Shield and was a corporate partner with law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn. Mr Gillies invested £50,000 in Ocutec in the latest round.
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