RenovaCare raises $2m on path to improve burn, wound care with its “SkinGun”

RenovaCare said this week it raised $2.3 million in a new direct offering to support its “SkinGun,” which CEO Thomas Bold thinks could be a significant boon to the burn and wound care industry.

This summer, CEO Bold spoke to MassDevice.com about the company’s SkinGun and CellMist technologies and what he thinks they can do to improve outcomes and reduce pain compared to current wound care treatments.

The company’s SkinGun uses a sample of stem cells collected from a patient’s healthy skin, which are isolated and placed into a water-based solution in a syringe, which is then attached to the device.

“A patient’s stem cells are isolated from a tiny skin sample – something like maybe a square inch – and these stem cells are liberated from the surrounding tissue, suspended in a water-based solution and simply sprayed onto the wound. This takes as little as 90 minutes, altogether,” Bold said. “What’s very important here is that we are not expanding the cells. We are not culturing the cells. We just take them.”

The technique allows for a ‘cell mist’, with 10,000s of small regenerated cell colonies, or islands, which grow outward and connect to each other to create an epithelial skin layer, Bold said.

“Beyond this stage the natural, cosmetic healing happens entirely naturally. We use our treatment only once, and you don’t have to retreat it. Once the layer is closed your skin grows and looks and feels like natural skin,” Bold said.

The system works quickly, taking days instead of weeks or months to produce a dry wound. Bold says the time frame for the treatment is much quicker than mesh grafting, which is the standard-of-care treatment for wounds.

In addition to cutting down time frames for healing, the procedure also saves patient a good amount of pain compared to traditional mesh grafting, Bold added.

“[Mesh grafting] is a surgical process where quite a lot of sheets of healthy skin from a patient are removed and punctured, stretched and stitched onto the wound again. This is quite painful and creates not only additional wounds at each donor site but the results can be very particular – including poor cosmetic outcomes, often with scarred and deformed skin and depending on where it is, restricted joint movement,” Bold said.

RenovaCare’s technology requires much less skin than is normally required with grafting, Bold said, moving from a 1-to-6 or 1-to-8 ratio required by grafting to a 1-to-100 ratio with the SkinGun.

Though the technology is currently being tested on burns, Bold said he thinks the platform is also applicable for other indications, including wounds, scar treatments and cosmetic uses.

The company is still gathering data and planning clinical trials of the device as it pursues pre-market approval from the FDA, Bold said.

In its recently closed $2.3 million offering, RenovaCare floated 915,000 shares of common stock at $2.50 per share and 915,000 common stock purchase warrants with an exercise price of $2.75. The purchase agreements are exercisable immediately and set to expire 5 years from the date of issuance, according to a press release.

Funds raised in the round will support working capital and other general corporate purposes, the company said.

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