DRIVEN Alumni Surpass $50M in Follow-on Funding

February 22, 2022 – Celdara Medical, LLC today announced that alumni of their DRIVEN Partnership Program have collectively surpassed $50M in follow-on funding. DRIVEN was established in 2018 as the Northeast’s NIH-funded Accelerator Hub. Led by Celdara Medical and Simbex, it has always had a singular goal: improve human health by increasing the number, quality, and success rate of biomedical startups.

DRIVEN is engaged with partners representing every major research institution in the region and has assembled a world class external advisory committee representing over $120B in assets under management and $1T in market capitalization. Over the last three years, DRIVEN has applied these resources for the benefit of 15 nascent medical startups, the most recent of which completed the program last week.

Since completing the DRIVEN Partnership Program, these 15 companies have brought two products to market, initiated five clinical trials, received >10 SBIR/STTR awards, received 16 term sheets from investors and partners, closed seven (pharma/biotech/medtech) partnering deals, and additionally closed over $52M in angel and venture investments across seven financings.

“It has been exceptionally rewarding to work with the DRIVEN companies over the past 3 years. These leaders are tackling critical aspects of patient care from cancers to cardiovascular diseases to neurological disorders. Each company showed up with passion and a strong commitment to improve human health,” said Julie Coleman, PhD, Program Lead at Celdara Medical. “I couldn’t be happier to witness the continued success of these rapidly growing companies.”

Rick Greenwald, CEO of Simbex, offered that, “Over the past 10 years, there has been a concerted effort by the National Institutes of Health to promote and assist technology commercialization from institutions and health-related small businesses.  DRIVEN’s unique team and approach delivered timely and critical commercialization services to our pharma and medical device startup clients, which led to rapid acceleration of their business, both strategically and financially.”

“When we started DRIVEN, we had a vision and high expectations,” said Jake Reder, Celdara Medical CEO and Principal Investigator of the DRIVEN Accelerator Hub. “What these entrepreneurs have accomplished in just a few years’ time has been beneficial beyond anything we could have predicted – for their companies, their universities, their communities, the region, and the patients they serve. Congratulations to all involved!”

Since the accelerator hub’s founding in September of 2018, DRIVEN has served biomedical innovators and entrepreneurs from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

 

About Celdara Medical, LLC

Celdara Medical was founded by Drs. Jake Reder and Michael Fanger in 2008 and is headquartered at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center (DRTC) in Lebanon, NH. Celdara Medical builds academic and early-stage innovations into high-potential medical companies, identifying discoveries of exceptional value at the earliest stages and moving them toward the market. Celdara Medical partners with inventors and their institutions, providing the developmental, financial, and business acumen required to bridge discovery and profitability. With robust funding options, a diverse and high-impact programmatic pipeline, and partnerships with world-class academic institutions and industry leaders, Celdara Medical navigates all aspects of a complex industry, accelerating science to improve human health. Further information about Celdara Medical is available at celdaramedical.com.

 

About Simbex

Simbex is an experienced medical device and consumer health product design and development partner that excels in transforming the most complex ideas into game-changing commercial solutions. Simbex brings together a diverse team with cutting edge knowledge of product development, science, data and analytics for tackling complex ideas and creating commercially successful products. Further information about Simbex is available at Simbex.com

 

About the DRIVEN Accelerator Hub

The DRIVEN Accelerator Hub is an NIH-funded consortium led by Celdara Medical and Simbex and includes partnerships with the leading research institutions in the Northeast IDeA region (Brown, Dartmouth, Maine Medical Center, MDI Biological Laboratory, University of Delaware, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island, and the University of Vermont). The mission of the DRIVEN Accelerator Hub is to create quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and save lives by 1) Increasing the number of quality medical startups 2) Decreasing their time to market and 3) Increasing their probability of success. DRIVEN provides tailored consulting to select entrepreneurs through the DRIVEN Partnership Program. The Program culminates in a presentation to the DRIVEN External Advisory Committee, comprised of leading investors and in-licensing business development professionals, and the potential for seed funding. DRIVEN has developed several online educational resources that can be found at: drivenacceleratorhub.com

DRIVEN is generously supported by NIGMS grant UGM130176.

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