A few months after graduating from the ZeroTo510 accelerator and a little less than a year after the company was created, SweetBio has finalized $900,000 in follow-on funding.
The funding, which comes from a combination of MB Venture Partners and Innova Memphis, will bring the total amount of money SweetBio has raised since its formation to $1 million.
“We believe the general market trend for more natural products and solutions is quickly spreading to the health care field, and SweetBio’s products are timed perfectly to take full advantage of this trend,” said Jan Bouten, partner at Innova Memphis. “On top of the great business opportunity, we’re thrilled ZeroTo510 was able to attract such a great team to Memphis to build their company here.”
SweetBio, which was founded by Isaac Rodriguez, has developed a regeneration membrane that can be used in oral surgeries to improve healing and decrease the development of bacteria through the use of Manuka honey.
The next step for the company will be to continue development of the product to prepare for submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for 510(k) clearance.
In addition to continuing the development of SweetBio’s membrane, the company is also working with dentists who are willing to test it to ensure they bring the most useful product to market they can bring.
“When we talk to clinicians, they seem to understand exactly what this product has the potential to do,” said Marsalas Whitaker, the company’s co-founder and vice president of marketing.
Kayla Rodriguez, SweetBio’s COO, said the goal is to submit to the FDA by 2016 and for the product to be on the market by 2017.
“The job has been to line up all the dominoes, and now that we have the funding, we can push that first domino to see the results,” Kayla Rodriguez said. “It’s nice to see the tangible stuff happen.”
For Rodriguez, completion of this round of fundraising will allow him to “jump back into the day in and day out of what SweetBio is,” and continue to develop a prototype.
“We have everything we need to move forward,” Rodriguez said. “There’s nothing holding us back but ourselves.”