Sofinnova Partners Announces Two First Investments from its MD Start III Medtech Acceleration Fund
2.7.2020 08:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Sofinnova Partners, a leading European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London and Milan, announced today the second investment from its MD Start III Fund, a medtech accelerator that actively works with clinicians and entrepreneurs to develop disruptive medical devices. In May 2019, the fund raised €48 million from key institutional investors and has made two seed investments so far: MastOR and Gradient Denervation Technologies. The most recent investment is in MastOR, a French company leveraging its core expertise in surgical robotics to develop enhanced laparoscopic devices to improve the precision and ergonomics of minimally-invasive surgery. The company was founded in 2019 by a renowned pioneer in laparoscopic surgery, Professor Brice Gayet of the Paris-based Institut Mutualiste Montsouris, and entrepreneur, Pierre Campredon.
“The Sofinnova MD Start team is known for its active, hands-on approach to company building,” said Prof. Gayet. “Their strategic and operational expertise is the perfect complement to the years of research and prototyping we have conducted thus far. Together, we will be able to accelerate the development of this game-changing technology and bring it to its full potential.”
MD Start III also invested in Gradient Denervation Technologies in February. The company is developing a medical device for a transvascular treatment of pulmonary hypertension, based on prior research and intellectual property developed at Stanford University. This has been an important area for MD Start, given its focus on interventional cardiology as a very innovation-savvy and fast-adopting medical community.
“These investments exemplify our mission of transforming innovative ideas into medical realities and backing inventors who are developing disruptive concepts for outstanding medical devices and procedures,” said Anne Osdoit, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. “Our network and partnerships have yielded a rich deal flow pipeline and we are confident in the potential for this fund to continue uncovering first-class devices that address major unmet medical needs.”
About Sofinnova Partners
Sofinnova Partners is a leading European venture capital firm specialized in Life Sciences. Based in Paris, France, with offices in London and Milan, the firm brings together a team of 40 professionals from all over Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The firm focuses on paradigm-shifting technologies alongside visionary entrepreneurs. Sofinnova Partners invests across the Life Sciences value chain as a lead or cornerstone investor, from very early-stage opportunities to late-stage/public companies. It has backed nearly 500 companies over more than 48 years, creating market leaders around the globe. Today, Sofinnova Partners has over €2 billion under management. For more information, please visit: www.sofinnovapartners.com
About MastOR
MastOR SAS is a Paris-based, early stage medical device company, developing a surgical robot for laparoscopy assistance. It is a privately held portfolio company of Sofinnova Partners, financed through the MD Start III Fund. The core technology is derived from joint research between the ISIR robotics lab at Sorbonne University and Professor Brice Gayet, a world-renowned surgeon and pioneer in minimally-invasive surgery. For more information, please visit: www.mastor-surgical.com
About Gradient Denervation Technologies
Gradient Denervation Technologies develops a device-based minimally invasive solution for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension with technology derived from an invention by clinicians from Stanford University. It is a privately held portfolio company of Sofinnova Partners, financed through the MD Start III Fund and based in Paris, France. For more information, please visit: www.gradientdenervation.com
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200701005947/en/
Contact information
Media Contacts:
Bommy Lee
Head of Communications, Sofinnova Partners
blee@sofinnovapartners.com
+33 (0) 6 47 71 38 11
North America
RooneyPartners LLC
Kate Barrette
kbarrette@rooneyco.com
+1 212 223 0561
France
StrategiesImage
Anne Rein
anne.rein@strategiesimage.com
+33 (0) 6 03 35 92 05
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Ant International’s Alipay+ Adds New Bank Partners Amid Cross-border Mobile Payment Boom in Asia Pacific24.7.2026 07:10:00 EEST | Press release
Alipay+, Ant International's unified wallet gateway, is adding more bank partners to its network of over 50 leading digital wallets and financial institutions. Its global bank partners range from incumbent banks to fully digital banks. The latest banking partner to join Alipay+ is Hang Seng Bank, Alipay+’s first banking partner in Hong Kong. Hang Seng Mobile App users can now make payments via QR code scan in the Chinese Mainland and overseas by simply using the Hang Seng Mobile App at over 100 million merchants across more than 55 countries/regions. Accelerating revenue growth through cross-border mobile payments Demand for outbound cross-border payments from Asia Pacific is projected to increase faster than the global average. Alongside growing adoption of digital wallets, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and consumer-to-business (C2B) outbound cross-border payment volume from Asia Pacific could reach 3.7 trillion by 2032, almost doubling from 2024. This growth represents opportunities for
mimik Operationalizes Agentic AI on the AMD Ryzen™ AI Embedded X100 Series23.7.2026 21:30:00 EEST | Press release
mimik today announced mimOE™ Embedded Edition, a package of its Agentix Operating Engine and a set of purpose-built tools for the AMD Ryzen™ AI Embedded X100 Series processor, the newest processor in a family designed for physical AI, autonomous systems, and industrial automation. Available to download today, mimOE Embedded Edition gives OEMs, tier-1 suppliers, system integrators, and agent developers the path to operationalize Agentix-Native systems (aka Agentic AI), in which autonomous agents can reason, coordinate, and act directly on devices, from PoC to scaled operations with certainty. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260723555565/en/ Agentic AI operations are both CPU and GPU bound. Enterprises can now scale with certainty. Generative AI has centered on the GPU. Agentix-Native systems must spread the work. In a real multi-agent workflow traced by mimik, more than 80 percent of operations were CPU work: d
U.S. Federal Court Permanently Bans 19 Online Sellers of Fake Urolithin A Supplements and Awards $5.3 Million in Damages to Timeline23.7.2026 17:27:00 EEST | Press release
Timeline (Amazentis SA), the Swiss life-sciences company that pioneered the postbiotic ingredient Urolithin A and its branded form Mitopure®, together with its U.S. subsidiary Timeline Longevity, Inc., announced today that the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has granted the companies’ motion for default judgments and permanent injunctions against 19 online sellers found to have marketed and sold nutritional supplements falsely advertised as containing Urolithin A. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722951066/en/ Timeline longevity supplement powered by Mitopure; proprietary, highly pure Urolithin A. The order, entered July 15, 2026 by Judge Myong J. Joun in Amazentis SA et al. v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule “A”, Case No. 1:25-cv-12913-MJJ (District of Massachusetts), permanently enjoins 19 defaulting defendants from further manufacturing, market
TestMu AI Introduces the Source-to-Verdict Loop in Kane CLI, Carrying Every Requirement to a Ship Decision With Portable Proof23.7.2026 16:45:00 EEST | Press release
TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest), the world's first Agentic AI-powered Quality Engineering platform, introduced a source-to-verdict loop in Kane CLI, its natural-language testing tool. Building on Kane CLI's evolution from a browser automation tool, the loop carries a product requirement to a ship decision, writing the tests, running them in the local browser, collecting the proof, measuring coverage from what actually happened, and returning a verdict. As AI agents write, run, and fix tests, a green checkmark is no longer enough: a step that checks nothing passes, a test written against a spec that changed weeks ago passes, and an agent that says “done” without the click ever landing passes. Empty green and earned green are the same color on every dashboard, the number climbs while the risk does not move. Kane CLI closes that gap: it carries a requirement to a verdict, and proves every step of it. One loop. Source to verdict. You no longer hand Kane CLI a test script, you hand it your
Norway’s health system adopts Wolters Kluwer UpToDate Enterprise Edition23.7.2026 16:30:00 EEST | Press release
Wolters Kluwer Health announced that Norway’s health system has renewed its adoption of UpToDate Enterprise Edition, a market-leading Clinical Decision Support (CDS) solution, for its nationwide health system which includes over 50 public hospitals and 11,000 beds in over 20 trusts. This extends a 15 year partnership with Helsebiblioteket, now part of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH). Helping clinicians on a national scale Kjell Tjensvoll, Team Leader for Helsebiblioteket said, ‘‘Providing frontline teams with easy access to the latest medical knowledge is vital in reducing unwarranted variation and improving patient care on a national scale. UpToDate Enterprise Edition enables this, and we are delighted to strengthen our relationship with Wolters Kluwer and provide continued support for clinicians across the country.’’ UpToDate Enterprise Edition was selected by Helsebiblioteket, the Norwegian Electronic Health Library. The selection followed a competitive process by th
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom