OSSTEC raises £2.5 million to advance joint replacement surgery

According to Imperial College London, OSSTEC, a spinout from the university, has raised a further £2.5 million to take its technology to the market. Based on novel material that behaves like bone, the company’s joint replacement system promises to simplify surgery, reduce implant failures, and keep patients active for longer.

The funding means that the technology is now closer to entering clinical use. “This is our go-to-market investment round,” said Dr. Max Munford, Founder and Chief Executive of OSSTEC. “These funds will enable us to get regulatory approval in the US, carry out our first surgeries as part of a trial in the UK, and to earn our first revenues in the US.”

The company’s introduction to the US was supported by Imperial College London, which recently opened an Imperial Global hub in the San Francisco Bay Area. It included OSSTEC in a Venture Trek, one of its missions to pitch and network in entrepreneurial hotspots such as New York and San Francisco.

“We first met some of our most supportive investors in this round on the San Francisco Venture Trek from two years ago,” Dr. Munford says.

The funding round was led by Empirical Ventures, a UK-based venture capital firm that specialises in deep technology. Due to the level of interest, the round remains open for further investment.

“OSSTEC is an excellent example of how scientific discovery can be transformed into real-world impact,” said Dr. Johnathan Matlock, Co-founder and General Partner at Empirical Ventures. “The company has huge potential to completely reform best practices in this field of healthcare, with an impressive team of scientists pushing the boundaries of engineering and medical research.”

OSSTEC was founded in 2021 from a PhD student project in the Department of Mechanical Engineering on how 3D printing could be used in surgery. In 2023, the company raised £1.2 million in seed funding from investors, including the Imperial College Enterprise Fund.

Since then, OSSTEC has been building its team of in-house engineers and a pool of surgeons to take the technology through to its first use in patients, which will be for partial knee replacements. While its lead surgeon and chief medical officer, Alex Liddle, is based in the UK, the company has been keen to build links with surgeons in the US, which is where the product will launch first.

“It was important for us to build a team of surgeons who are global leaders in their space, with a combined experience using a broad range of implants, surgical techniques, and technology adoption,” said Dr. Munford. “There are a lot of benefits in having research and commercialisation teams side-by-side. We get to have interesting conversations with the academic researchers, which you don’t typically have as a product-focused startup, and researchers and students get to see the process of taking a medical product to market.” As OSSTEC matures, he hopes that further research partnerships will emerge. “The plan is to use our first product as a platform for further innovation, so I’d love OSSTEC to be sponsoring PhDs and working on other projects with Imperial researchers.”

“OSSTEC’s journey is a brilliant example of the kind of entrepreneurial venture we strive to support at Imperial – one that translates world-class research into real-world impact,” said Ben Mumby-Croft, Director of Entrepreneurship at Imperial Enterprise Lab. “Imperial Enterprise Lab is proud to have played a role in its growth, from early-stage support to connecting it with investors through our Venture Trek programme.”