October 30, 2008 – Nashville Business Journal
Pathfinder Therapeutics Inc. has closed on a $5.2 million round of venture capital financing led by a North Carolina venture capital firm working with five other investors, three of them from Nashville.
Nashville-based Pathfinder is a medical device company focused on the development of “surgical GPS” systems for the abdomen.
The company reports Hatteras Venture Partners of Research Triangle Park N.C. led the A round of funding. Other investors are Florida Gulfshore Capital, Clayton & Associates, Nashville Capital Network, Lumira and Vanderbilt University.
As part of the terms, Clay Thorp and Bob Morff from Hatteras Venture Partners and Richard Molloy from Florida Gulfshore Capital have joined the board of Pathfinder, a release says. Morff will also serve as interim CEO for Pathfinder.
“After speaking with dozens of surgeons and thought leaders around the world, we are confident that Pathfinder will fill a critical void for modernizing surgical precision in the exploding field of robotic and image-guided surgery,” Thorp says in the release.
The new capital will finance the launch of PlaniSight Linasys and SurgiSight Linasys, medical devices focused on the planning and intra-operative navigation of liver surgery, the release says.
“This investment allows the translation of our research and development from the laboratory to the hospital and now to the marketplace where it can help the maximum number of patients,” says Robert Galloway, a Pathfinder co-founder and professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University.
“Vanderbilt has nurtured and developed Pathfinder for several years,” says Dr. Harry Jacobson, vice chancellor for health affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the release.
Hatteras Venture Partners is a venture capital firm based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., with a focus on biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and related opportunities in human medicine. The firm was founded in 2000.