Runway Growth Capital a leading provider of growth loans to both venture and non-venture backed companies seeking an alternative to raising equity, today announced the close of a senior secured term loan of $50 million to VERO Biotech, LLC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, focused on saving lives, alleviating suffering, and improving the health economics of care.
Runway Growth Capital, in the past two quarters, has announced the closing of three life sciences sector deals totaling $130 million in aggregate; VERO Biotech joins Gynesonics and Intact Vascular in Runway’s life sciences portfolio.
VERO Biotech (formerly known as GeNO LLC) is a biotechnology company focused on the design, development, and commercialization of next-generation products to meet the needs of patients with a variety of pulmonary and cardiac diseases. The company has developed the GENOSYL® Delivery System (GENOSYL DS), the only “tankless” delivery system of inhaled nitric oxide approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The GENOSYL DS reshapes the form factor (e.g. cassette-based and portable) for the delivery and use of nitric oxide, a vasodilator and is proven to play a critical role in the care of patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the neonate.
Inhaled nitric oxide was originally approved by the FDA in 1999 and since then there has been very little innovation in its delivery. Prior to VERO Biotech’s GENOSYL DS, nitric oxide gas was delivered via large, cumbersome pressurized gas cylinders that weigh ~75 pounds and are difficult to manage (potential NO2 exposure due to leakage, tank delivery, storage and disposal logistics, set-up and operating complexities, manual usage “clockage,” etc.). VERO Biotech’s proprietary delivery system eliminates the need for large tanks and the associated logistical burden. GENOSYL DS is a tankless and portable system engineered with redundant backup features, which delivers a constant concentration of inhaled nitric oxide gas to patients and the easy-to-use interface.
VERO Biotech’s system is also approved to administer inhaled nitric oxide during interhospital and intrahospital patient transport and in the magnetic resonance imaging suite, representing the broadest FDA approval in the industry for the Acute-care Setting including MRI, Ground, Fixed Wing and Rotary Transport.
“VERO’s form-factor, portability, and ease-of-use in the delivery and management of nitric oxide is a very disruptive technology,” said Rob Lake, Managing Director and Head of Life Sciences at Runway Growth Capital. “It will be difficult for hospitals that use nitric oxide to ignore the ‘economics of care’ benefits that GENOSYL DS provides – lowers costs of tank transport, storage, handling, service, disposal, and overall improved patient care.”
“After much due diligence, it was clear that Runway Growth Capital understands the nuances of our business,” said Brent V. Furse, CEO and President, VERO Biotech. “Working with a premier lender like Runway who gets us, and has a reputation for being a flexible and understanding partner, is integral to fueling our marketing and product development to ensure greater access to our proprietary tankless, cassette-based GENOSYL Delivery System.”
“We are thrilled to include VERO Biotech in Runway’s portfolio of innovative life sciences companies and support its effort to ensure that more patients will have access to what is a remarkable reimagining of how to care for patients who depend on nitric oxide,” said Lake.
