Innosphere-backed device maker gets $1M grant

BOULDER and FORT COLLINS — Aspero Medical Inc. has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue its development of a product for use in gastrointestinal endoscopies.

The grant brings its total funding to $2.9 million since a 2018 launch. Aspero is a portfolio firm of Fort Collins biotech incubator Innosphere Ventures’ investment fund, which committed $575,000 early on.

Rockies Ventures Club led a second seed round of $500,000. Aspero also previously received $800,000 in National Institutes of Health  and NSF grants, and from the state.

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Aspero in August secured a patent for its Ancora Balloon Overtube. Ancora combines a balloon with a sleeve-like piece of silicone. Both go into the small bowel in an endoscopy with the scope. The balloon is inflated and deflated and grips the inner intestinal walls, moving the scope along the tract.

The patent’s “basis is the texturing of the balloon,” Aspero CEO Mark Rentschler said in August. Nubby protrusions on the balloon let it anchor along the lining of the small intestine as the scope moves.

An Innosphere press release on the new funding said more than 51 million gastrointestinal endoscopies are done per year. Hospitals look to be the main buyer of the product, Rentschler said in August.

He co-founded Aspero with chief medical officer Steven Edmundowicz. Both are University of Colorado  Boulder professors. They invented the technology with Karl Johannes, formerly one of Rentschler’s Ph.D. students.

The NSF money and the patent keep Aspero on track to begin selling the device in 2022.