Ferronova secures $3.5m funding for cancer trials

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Ferronova, the Australian company developing a technology to help speed up the early detection of the spread of cancer received $3.5 million in funding as it plans human trials for oral, breast and colorectal cancers.

The technology – a hybrid smart magnetic and fluorescent nanoparticle – was developed by Ferronova and researchers from the University of South Australia, the University of New South Wales, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and the University of Sydney.

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Ferronova chief executive Stewart Bartlett with physicist Dr Aidan Cousins, one of the academic co-founders of the company. 

Venture capital firm Uniseed led the funding round with participation from Artesian Venture Partners, former Macquarie Group chief executive Alan Moss and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund. The University of Sydney has also become a shareholder as part of a licensing agreement.

Chief executive Stewart Bartlett said Ferronova's technology targeted a weakness in existing medical imaging technologies like CT, PET or MRI scans. These can help detect the presence and spread of various cancers, but can only pick up metastases that have grown to a size of 2-3 millimetres or more.

"When the cancer is in the very early stages, medical imaging can't detect it. What happens is that within surgery, the surgeon removes the primary tumour, and a sample of surrounding tissue, which is sent off to pathology for analysis," Mr Bartlett said.

"But the data from [colorectal cancer] clinical trials shows that there are about 25 per cent of patients that have the very early spread of cancer that just gets missed. Our technology is aimed to resolve that."

Human trials

Ferronova is aiming to sell its diagnostic technology to hospitals' surgical oncology departments for different types of cancers. This particular funding round will allow it to conduct first-in-human trials for oral cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer.

Before taking on the role at Ferronova, Mr Bartlett co-founded a handheld ultrasound company called Signostics.

Signostics was acquired by American company Echonous after receiving US$70 million in investment from private equity firm KKR between 2015 and 2017.

Uniseed chief executive Peter Devine, who has worked with various biotech startups and as an academic researcher in oncology, heads the only Australian university venture fund in the top twenty among a ranked list of 320 equivalent funds worldwide.

"COVID-19 hit right in the middle of the capital raising, and we were concerned a number of investors would pull out or back away," Dr Devine said.

"We did have one investor who initially pulled out but then came back in before we closed, so it was great to get the funding round closed with such a large number of experienced investors on board."

Dr Devine said that a combination of factors made Ferronova an attractive investment.

These included the company's existing animal research data, which showed intellectual property it had licensed from the University of Sydney enables it to better pick up cancers in the lymph nodes, and confidence that the technology could be used to explore different types of cancer.

He said he hoped the funding would help the company demonstrate proof of concept data in colorectal, breast and other cancers through the clinical trials, and then explore partnerships with a large multinational to complete regulatory approval and marketing.