Company seeking more venture capital funding
Providence’s Afferent Corp. has tapped a veteran in the medical device industry to be its CEO and president and take its technology in treating nerve dysfunctions from clinical trials to market.
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David M. Hable, the new chief executive, last week detailed plans to launch a second round of venture capital funding at the end of the year. He also talked about how he plans to bring the young company’s non-invasive treatment model to market in two years.
“There are a ton of assumptions in that, that we meet certain clinical milestones,” Hable said in an interview. “But the exciting thing about the Afferent technology is there’s a potential for a non-invasive iteration … as well as a fully implantable system.”
The non-invasive model consists of an electrode – imbedded in shoe insoles or attached to a garment – that emits electrical currents to, for example, stimulate damaged nerves to improve motor functions.
The second delivery system for the technology would be a pacemaker-like device implanted in the chest and connected to a body part with nerve damage, Hable said. “That’s a longer, much more complex development that would take four or five years” to bring to market, he added.
Hable, 51, of Marshfield, Mass., spent 24 years of his career at a medical devices division of Johnson & Johnson, where he served as division president from 1998 to 2003. When he left, he said, the Raynham, Mass.-based division had 500 employees worldwide with about $275 million in annual revenue.
For roughly the next year, he was CEO and president of BrainsGate, an Israeli firm working on an implant to stimulate damaged nerves.
With Hable’s arrival in April, Afferent’s former CEO Jason D. Harry – a professor at Brown University in the early 1990s – will devote more time to product development with the new title of chief technology officer. And as executive vice president, he remains active in business planning and development.
Trials for the non-invasive device are now under way at Northwestern University in Illinois, the University of Virginia and Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital of Boston, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. After the trials, Hable said, the company plans to seek Food and Drug Administration approvals in order to market the product line.
In the United States alone, he noted, there are about 5.5 million diabetics with chronic nerve damage due to strokes who could benefit from Afferent’s technology.
Hable said that later this year he plans to begin recruiting investors to take part in the company’s second stage of venture capital financing to raise $15 million to $20 million.
The funding would help the company add 20 employees over the next year.
He noted that previous investors in the firm have already expressed interest in participating. The company raised $4 million in an initial round completed in October 2004, with local investment firms such as Slater Technology Fund and Point Judith Capital Partners participating. In addition, its research has benefited from $2.5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to the company.
“[Hable] brings key breadth of experience and strategic thinking to the venture,” said Gina Raimondo, a member of Afferent’s board of directors and general partner at Point Judith Capital, in a statement. “We are confident that he will advance product commercialization efforts and create new business opportunities.”
