FloSpine Secures $1.7 Million in Funding, Focuses on Flagship Medical Device Sales

By Karen-Janine Cohen

FloSpine, a maker of medical spine equipment, has raised $1.7 million in funding after recently closing on $530,000 in seed funding. Peter Harris, president and CEO of the Boca Raton-based company, said the funding came from a group of high-net-worth individuals, including business executives, doctors and a Silicon Valley company.

FloSpine has developed several medical devices dedicated to improving spine health, and its current focus is KeyLift, a product designed to relieve pressure from spinal stenosis. The company bills it as the first expandable interlaminar stabilization procedure for this condition, which at any given time affects about 600,000 people in the United States.

“KeyLift is our signature product,” Harris (pictured above) said. “It’s completely different.” Spinal stenosis, he explained, is a narrowing of the spinal canal that affects and compresses the nerve roots. It’s most common in older people and occurs when the intervertebral discs that separate the vertebrae begin to collapse or rupture. This leads to nerve compression and pain, commonly known as sciatica. KeyLift is designed to replicate the function of the discs, which relieves pain while stabilizing the spine.

The device, Harris said, is a step up from the competition. The KeyLift, as well as other products with the same function, are implanted in the spine. But, Harris explained, the KeyLift goes deeper, into the spinal lamina — the back of the vertebral bone. When the KeyLift is expanded — a key part of its design and innovation — tiny teeth on the device engage and engage the bone. “Once it’s in the patient, you can turn the screw, expand it and open it. It won’t move.”

That’s an important point. One criticism of some other products, Harris said, is that while they are also inserted in a similar way, they don’t go in as deeply and aren’t as rigidly secured. Over time, the internal movement can wear away at the bone, he said.

Harris was born in England and moved to South Africa with his family at age 6. He graduated as a mechanical engineer and worked in the South African aerospace industry before moving to California, where he also worked in the oil and gas sector. In the early 2000s, when air force bases were closed, he moved into electronics, which led him to the medical device industry.

Then came the days when the Internet and technological advances fueled the startup trend. Harris worked for several medical technology and device companies that focused on the spine and eventually decided to start his own company. I built a lot of good products for different spine companies,” he said.

FloSpine, founded in 2011 and headquartered in Florida Atlantic University’s Research Park, is now a 12-person team and part of South Florida’s thriving medical technology sector. The company holds eight patents for spine-focused devices, including KeyLift.

The KeyLift itself was developed with Dr. Cheng-Lun Soo, an Oklahoma City surgeon who has used FloSpine products for several years. The device received FDA approval last fall and has already been used in several procedures.

The KeyLift concept is based on detecting spinal stenosis when it’s causing pain, but before a patient needs more extensive spine surgery. “KeyLift is designed for a specific group of patients,” Harris said, explaining that someone typically complains of back pain and is referred to physical therapy and possibly receives cortisone injections. The condition often worsens, eventually leading to a spinal fusion with rods and screws. “We want to get in the middle before you end up in the hospital for rods and screws,” Harris said.

KeyLift treatments are used when the pain is still mild and can be performed on an outpatient basis.

Harris says the sales team is focused on promoting the product to surgical centers, which have expanded during and after the pandemic, when large hospitals, inundated with Covid patients, were closed to non-emergency patients. In the meantime, Harris said, interventional pain doctors are doing more of these types of implants.

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