ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Artelon is stepping into the foot and ankle market with an innovative biomaterial for soft-tissue repair, focusing on a common but challenging indication that has unsatisfactory solutions to date. Its early promise has caught the attention of Vensana, a leading medtech venture capital firm, which is betting on the product’s continued growth and product portfolio expansion in this fast-growing subsegment of orthopedics.
A great majority of people sprain their ankle at some point in their lives and, in fact, ankle sprains are the most common reason people end up in the emergency room. About 20% of cases result in chronic ankle instability (CAI), a debilitating orthopedic condition that affects gait and mobility and puts people at high risk for more sprains. While surgery can reduce those odds, it is followed by a long recovery period, often with residual pain; moreover, about a third of patients continue to have postsurgery CAI and face limited treatment options—a situation that has not changed in decades.
Aaron Smith, a biomedical engineer and successful orthopedics executive with extensive experience in tissue engineering and extremities marketing, understood these dynamics and gaps in care, as well as the potential for a large opportunity. When in 2017 a private investor group (International Life Sciences) controlling a small, struggling orthopedic biomaterials company offered him an opportunity to turn the ship around, he jumped at the chance.
The company, Artelon, had existed for more than two decades, and was marketing a proprietary synthetic biomaterial as a graft for broad orthopedic applications, but it had encountered multiple setbacks due largely to lack of focus. An orthopedics industry veteran who had co-founded Amniox Medical, a maker of amniotic tissue membrane, and before that was an executive at Wright Medical Technology (now part of Stryker), Smith redirected the company to narrow its priorities to the burgeoning but underrecognized foot and ankle surgery market.
Under Smith, Artelon doubled down on its unique technology and built the case for use of its products in specific indications requiring tendon and ligament augmentation and repair by demonstrating that its biomaterial provides durable benefits and good outcomes. In May 2023, the company hit an early but important milestone, closing on a $20 million Series B financing, led by Vensana Capital as the only institutional investor, with an additional $3 million from existing investors. A month later, on June 6, the FDA cleared expanded use of Artelon’s FlexBand portfolio of products (FlexBand, FlexPatch, and FlexBand Plus) to cover specific types of ligament repair surgery, in addition to already approved tendon repairs.
