“The Gründerfonds Ruhr is the right choice to anyone looking for a competent partner and investor. Its regional network provides strong local support for anyone’s project and subsequently helps to expand with the right partners. Also, the Gründerfonds team members made a lot of valuable contributions based on their long-standing industry experience.”
– Dr. Frank Beyer, Co-founder of Fasciotens“ – Dr. Frank Beyer, Co-founder of Fasciotens

The medtech company Fasciotens was founded in 2016 by the surgeons, Dr. Gereon Lill and Dr. Frank Beyer, with the vision to fundamentally innovate and improve medical care for patients undergoing open abdomen procedures. The main problem with a temporarily opened abdomen is that the abdominal wall can begin to recede, which often makes subsequent abdominal closure impossible. After several years of development and preclinical testing, Fasciotens© Abdomen, which tightens the abdominal wall when the abdominal cavity is opened and thereby increases the intra-abdominal volume, was successfully introduced to the market. Currently, Fasciotens© Abdomen is already in use in various European countries.

In the meantime, Fasciotens has also further developed its approach specifically for newborns (Fasciotens© Pediatric) and intraoperative use for large abdominal wall hernias (Fasciotens© Hernia).

Shortly after creating Fasciotens GmbH, the company’s two founders and the Managing Directors of Gründerfonds scheduled an introductory meeting. Following that initial meeting and the preclinical validation of Fasciotens© Abdomen, Gründerfonds Ruhr, together with Venture Capital investor, coparion, invested €2.6 million in Fasciotens as part of a Series A financing round. Prior to the Series A fundraising, the Fasciotens founders had secured €200,000 from private funds to finance the development of a prototype and initial animal testing. After the animal studies had shown a highly significant advantage of Fasciotens© Abdomen, Dr. Lill and Dr. Beyer were targeting a CE certification for their product in order to enter its first clinical application studies. In addition, they planned to prepare for market entry and already had ideas for two additional products they wanted to develop.

Gründerfonds Ruhr supported Fasciotens in its earliest phase of development not only financially, but also by setting up clearly defined milestones and making introductions to a competent network of investors and LPs, including marketing and strategy specialists. In addition, Gründerfonds’ mentoring team provided their long-standing industrial and technical expertise to the development of Fasciotens.

With help of the collaboration a CE approval was obtained. Further, Fasciotens© Abdomen took part in clinical evaluation studies at the universities in Bonn and Aachen. In addition, for the first time, in September 2019, Fasciotens© Abdomen was also used outside of Germany in Italy. To date, there are distribution partnerships in place with companies in Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

After all planned milestones of the Series A financing were successfully met, Fasciotens, in collaboration with Gründerfonds Ruhr, is entering a second round of financing so that the development as well as the market entry of the next set of products, can be completed. In addition, international clinical application studies will initiate in Miami, USA. This will also open the door to new distribution partnerships and contribute to Fasciotens’ market potential, both nationally and internationally. Based on the success to date, the talented management team and the effective Series A fundraising round, Fasciotens and Gründerfonds will maintain and expand their collaboration into the next phase of corporate and clinical development.