An invention by Finnish company Askel Healthcare aims to overcome joint pain and rebuild cartilage to avoid osteoarthritis
Helsinki, 13 January 2020 – Askel Healthcare Ltd, a Finnish biotechnology company, is on a mission to overcome the need for total joint replacements. Askel’s deep tech solution focuses on early intervention and prevention of joint surface degradation.
Askel’s solution, COPLA®, is a medical device used as a cartilage lesion filler that offers the required properties for cartilage regeneration enabling cartilage repair before osteoarthritic changes occur.
COPLA® is already in use for the benefit of veterinary patients. The next step is to move forward to treat human patients. To reach this, the company has announced a share issue on the crowdfunding platform Invesdor. The share issue is open until the end of January 2020.
Joint pain due to osteoarthritis is familiar to a lot of people and it drastically declines the quality of life and capability to work. For example, the care costs and earning losses attributed to arthritis totaled ca. $303.5B in the US in 2013.
Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease: Osteoarthritis affects the life of an estimated 242 million people globally. Despite the prevalence of the problem, there are no early stage treatments available for restoring and maintaining cartilage tissue to prevent osteoarthritic changes in the joint. Current treatments for cartilage damage focus on relieving the symptoms such as pain, but do not treat the damaged joint surface itself.
When a joint, such as knee, is severely damaged, a total joint replacement is often the only surgical treatment option. It is well known that a damage at the joint surface tissue, called cartilage, is an important initiator of the processes leading to osteoarthritis.
“Unfortunately, there is a lack of methods to repair cartilage damage early, i.e. when the lesion is still small. Therefore, the condition gets worse and often the end result is osteoarthritis - and the only treatment is a joint replacement. Askel has developed a solution together with orthopedic surgeons to treat these challenging early stage cartilage defects”, says Dr. Virpi Muhonen, the CEO of Askel Healthcare.
Askel aims to make COPLA® available for human patients in 2024 and to reach a leading position in cartilage treatment market, worth an estimated $2.2B. To do this, the company is raising €500,000–€1,000,000 in exchange for 9.08%–16.64% equity. The share issue is managed through the equity crowdfunding service Invesdor at www.invesdor.com/askel.
Contact:
Virpi Muhonen, CEO, Askel Healthcare Ltd, +358 40 489 3840, v.muhonen@askelhealthcare.com
Ville Eromäki, Client Manager, Invesdor Ltd, +358 50 411 5970, ville.eromaki@invesdor.com
Askel Healthcare Ltd in brief:
Askel Healthcare Ltd is a medical device company focusing on orthopedics. The company is based in Helsinki, Finland. Company’s first product, COPLA®, has been developed for cartilage repair and prevention of osteoarthritis. COPLA® has been available for veterinary use since autumn 2017.
COPLA® creates optimal environment for articular cartilage reconstruction. Its functionality is based on advanced weight-adaptive structure to enable healing of cartilage tissue. Next step for the company is to access the human cartilage repair markets in Europe with CE-marked COPLA®.
About Invesdor Group
Invesdor Group is a pan-European digital investment and financing platform for companies of all life stages, from startups to large corporations. Through its parent company, Invesdor Ltd, it holds a MiFID II license and offers a wide range of digital financing solutions. Today, Invesdor Group has over 50,000 registered users from 150 countries who have invested more than 130 MEUR. https://www.invesdor.com/en
