RWK Goodman advises BGF on multi-million-pound investment round for Caristo Diagnostics
The round was led by BGF and existing investors including Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), Longwall Ventures and the Oxford Technology & Innovation Fund (OTIF).
The funding will be used to roll-out Caristo Diagnostic’s CaRi-Heart®, a ground-breaking AI-based cardiovascular risk prediction technology, which has just received its CE mark accreditation and is available for use by doctors across the UK and Europe.
CaRi-Heart® transforms the diagnostic accuracy of coronary CT angiograms (CCTA), a test that is widely used to identify patients with suspected heart disease, but currently unable to identify the “ticking-time-bomb” arteries that lead to fatal heart attacks in future years.
The investment in the business will be used to commercialise the CaRi-Heart® technology, bringing it to the market in both the US and Europe.
The RWK Goodman team was led by corporate partner Iain Butler, who said: “We are very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with BGF to help the development of some truly pioneering technology. It also underlines our ongoing commitment to supporting the ground-breaking work carried out by leading academics and founders in Oxford.”
Dr Cheerag Shirodaria, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Caristo Diagnostics, said: “The beauty of our technology is that it will not only save countless lives, but it is incredibly simple. CaRi-Heart® analysis can be undertaken on any CT heart scan, hospitals don’t need to change equipment and patients don’t need another test. Physicians simply need to send their patient’s CT heart scan and they will then receive a CaRi-Heart® score to guide patient management.”
BGF is one of the most active investors in the life sciences space. To date, it has backed more than 30 life science businesses, with its current portfolio spanning diagnostics, medtech and digital health, as well as services, software and tools supporting therapeutic development.
Jack Teasdale, investor at BGF, said: “Caristo Diagnostics is an incredibly exciting business that has the potential to fundamentally disrupt the approach to the diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease, while delivering considerable cost savings to healthcare providers and improving patient outcomes. This is a highly scalable business addressing a huge market opportunity, and we believe it can become a market leader in a short period of time. We look forward to working with Cheerag and his team, to make the uptake of this product a reality.”