A Phoenix-based medical device startup has raised a new round of capital to expand market reach of its advanced surgical blades.
Planatome, which applies an “atomic-level polishing” technique used in the semiconductor industry to create high-precision surgical blades, raised $5 million in a series A round led by a group of undisclosed investors, some of whom include friends, family and doctors.
The company also raised $1 million in convertible venture debt.
Planatome will use the funds to hire more employees, expand manufacturing capacity of its surgical blades and create more products via applying its polishing technology to other surgical instruments, Tim Tobin, CEO of Planatome, said.
“Hopefully in the next two weeks, we’ll announce a distributor that we’ll use to accelerate commercialization in the U.S.,” Tobin said, adding the company also has a distributor in South Korea, where its advanced surgical blades received clearance from the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
The surgical blades — registered for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — are used by several hospitals and surgical centers nationwide. The company is also piloting its blades at a large surgery center in the Midwest, Tobin said.
In addition, the company is planning to use a portion of the funding to leverage its technology for development of other products — like surgical scissors, laparoscopic tools, and robotic end effectors.
Planatome’s patented surface modification technology is based on chemical mechanical planarization — a process used in advanced semiconductor chip manufacturing.
The company uses the polishing technology to create smooth, high-precision surgical blades. Planatome claims that surgeons using its blades report a reduction in soft tissue damage at the incision site, fewer complications and faster healing times.
"Our momentum is building, and this funding will fuel market activation by enabling us to reach more surgeons, as well as more rapidly expand additional product design efforts," David Husband, Planatome’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “During the early Covid lockdowns, with virtually all surgical procedures canceled or delayed, we utilized the time to further refine our blade design for the benefit of surgeons as well as patients. Now, with this investment in hand, great surgeon feedback and the healthcare industry back to normal, we are well prepared for rapid growth.”
Planatome’s surgical blades differ from the traditional scalpel because the company's technology removes inconsistencies and defects, Tobin said.
“There’s been a lot of work companies have done into pushing the cost down, but nobody has thought of the fact that we should improve the technology to bring the clinical benefits up,” he said. “There’s been nothing done to improve the scalpel, technically, in the past 100 years. We buy scalpels from largest manufacturer in the world and polish them up.”
Startup spun off from another Phoenix firm
Planatome is a spinoff from Entrepix Inc., a Phoenix-based company also co-founded by Tobin and Steve Horowitz nearly 25 years ago that specializes in chemical mechanical polishing technology.
“We specialized in that and it got to the point where we had the world’s largest portfolio of CMP processes,” Tobin said.
By 2016, Entrepix was doing business with Intel, Apple, Samsung and others. That’s when Tobin saw opportunity to use chemical mechanical polishing technology in the medical industry,
Tobin launched Planatome in June 2017 as a subsidiary of Entrepix. After Amtech Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASYS) acquired Entrepix in January, the company became a separate entity and officially changed its name to Planatome, which is the trade name of its surgical blades. Horowitz is a board member of Planatome but is not involved in daily operations of the company, Tobin said.
The company’s scalpels are in the process of regulatory clearance in Australia and New Zealand with plans to gain approval in Europe, Tobin said.
Planatome has more than a dozen employees and is looking to hire additional workers as it scales.
The company, at 4717 E. Hilton Ave., is also seeking new office space in Phoenix with close access to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Tobin said.
With commercialization of Planatome’s surgical blades underway, the company expects to generate revenue in the first quarter of 2024, Tobin said.
“Then, we’ll take our technology from the scalpel and apply it to a host of surgical instruments,” he said.
