Friday, May 23, 2008

Choice Therapeutics seals up $2.7M for wound-care tech

By Ryan McBride

Yet another medical technology startup in Massachusetts is taking a stab at the rapidly growing market for wound-care products.

Choice Therapeutics Inc., led by local industry veteran and CEO E. James Hutchens, quietly began business in Wrentham last year and raised $2.7 million in April 2008 in a Series A round of financing, according to federal documents.

Choice Therapeutics says it plans to develop products in the wound-healing and surgical dressings markets.

Other Bay State firms in the market include I-Therapeutix Inc. and Arch Therapeutics Inc. Arch, which is developing a liquid intended to harden over surgical wounds, is backed by serial entrepreneur Steve Kelly and has recently licensed key patents to its technology from MIT. And I-Therapeutix in February closed a $6 million Series B round of VC to advance its polymer-based sealant for surgical cuts on eyes. Both companies were formed in 2006.

While the market is dominated by such medical products juggernauts as Johnson & Johnson, fledgling firms believe they have new ways to heal surgical cuts.   

“My view is, we’ve got a really nice company,” said Hutchens, who added that he raised money for the recent financing from individual investors. He declined to divulge details of the firm’s technology for competitive reasons, but he added that “we are doing something unique in this segment.”

Hutchens, a former executive at Natick-based Boston Scientific Corp. and other medical devices firms, was most recently a general partner at the Natick office of VC firm Origin Partners. Origin is not listed as an investor in Choice. 

The global wound-care market — which encompasses everything from surgical dressings and sutures to polymer-based sealants and skin substitutes — was valued at $10 billion in 2007 and is projected to grow to $12.5 billion by 2012, according to a report issued last month by Espicom Business Intelligence of the United Kingdom.