A Medical Device Daily

Ortho Kinematics (Austin, Texas), a privately held spine diagnostics company, said it has completed a $3.5 million funding round. Investors include PTV Sciences, the State of Texas Emerging Technology Fund, and Gatebridge Investments.

The company is commercializing the KineGraph VMA (Vertebral Motion Analyzer), a technology designed to measure both the quantity and quality of inter-vertebral motion, providing spine surgeons a painless, non-invasive way to assess spine function. The KineGraph VMA technology is installed at two U.S. hospitals and one location in the U.K., with several additional U.S. hospitals scheduled for installation over the next six months, the company noted.

"We are pleased to raise these funds in today's challenging financing environment," said CEO Adam Deitz. "We believe it's a testament to the strong potential of our technology to improve patient outcomes. We are already working with highly regarded spine clinicians who understand the dire need for improved spine diagnostic capabilities. Our company now has the resources and commitment necessary to expand commercialization plans."

The company has recently relocated to Austin and embarked on a limited rollout of its KineGraph VMA technology. Ortho said this rollout will provide important clinical data and feedback while providing a growing set of clinicians the ability to get hands-on experience with the technology in a clinical research setting.

In other financing activity, IntraOp Medical (Sunnyvale, California) said it has filed an amendment to its articles of incorporation to effect a reverse stock split, whereby each 50 shares of common stock was combined into one share of common stock. The outstanding share count after giving effect to the reverse split is now about 7.8 million shares, reduced from roughly 392.8 million shares. In addition, the company has reduced the number of authorized shares of common stock from 500 million to 100 million and authorized a class of up to 20 million shares of preferred stock for future fund raising rounds.

By effecting the reverse split and thereby reducing the company's outstanding share count, IntraOp hopes to make the company's stock more appealing to larger, institutional investors in its capital raising efforts.

"We have made significant progress this year towards our cost reduction and market development goals," said CEO John Powers. "We are now in the phase where we need to raise a new round of capital to fully execute on our dermatology and IORT market strategies. This stock split enhances our ability to attract larger institutional investors and properly prepare for the future."

IntraOp's common stock began trading on a post-split basis on Tuesday. IntraOp's ticker symbol has changed to IOPD.