Oxford Endovascular Turned EIC Accelerator Cash Into a Brain Stent

A brain aneurysm is a bulge in an artery wall that can burst without warning. Each year about 51,000 EU citizens suffer the resulting bleed, a subarachnoid haemorrhage, and 40% of them die, according to the project summary on CORDIS. Oxford Endovascular, a University of Oxford spin-out incorporated in September 2015, set out to treat unruptured aneurysms with a new kind of flow diverter: a fine metal tube placed inside the artery that steers blood past the bulge so that it can heal.

In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 round of 9 January 2019 the company won a Horizon 2020 grant for OXIFLOW. The EU contribution was €2,962,979.95 towards a total cost of €4,232,828.50, and the project's last stage was to be a "10-patient First-in-Man (FIM) study", CORDIS states. The project closed on 31 January 2024 with the device redesigned after animal tests and the human study still ahead, according to its final report. More than two and a half years later, no first human implant has been announced.

Where Oxford Endovascular Stands Now

The company is active. Companies House shows no insolvency, accounts filed in January 2026 for the year to 30 September 2025, and a confirmation statement dated 9 September 2026, according to its register entry and filing history. Those accounts report a loss of £2,564,310, net assets of £5,273,640 and an average of nine staff, up from six the year before. The directors state that the company has enough resources for at least 12 months.

Public news has stopped since the last funding round. The latest item on the company's news page is the £8 million round of 20 May 2024. A search of ClinicalTrials.gov returns no study for OxiFlow or for the company, and no first-in-human result appears in the company's announcements or the trade press.

The leadership has changed. Chief executive Mike Karim, a director since the company's incorporation, resigned as a director on 30 September 2024, according to the officers list, and the Norwegian device maker Medistim named him its chief commercial officer on 31 January 2025, citing his time at Oxford Endovascular. The company website now lists a chairman, a clinical director and a technology director, but no chief executive. Who runs the company day to day could not be verified. Pay to directors fell from £480,493 in 2023/24 to £14,252 in 2024/25, the 2025 accounts show.

The Technology: Origami Inside an Artery

Aneurysms are treated in three main ways, the CORDIS summary explains. Surgical clipping works well over the long term but means open brain surgery. Coiling, which fills the bulge with platinum wire through a catheter, is less risky but less durable. Flow diverters, braided mesh tubes laid across the neck of the aneurysm, promise the durability of clipping with the low risk of coiling, but the summary says existing designs "have failed to live up to expectations" because braided mesh gives "weak and non-uniform radial forces", which leads to poor contact with the vessel wall, uneven porosity and "device coning".

OxiFlow is laser-cut from Nitinol, a shape-memory nickel-titanium alloy, and its folding pattern comes from origami engineering, the speciality of Zhong You, a professor of engineering science at Oxford and the company's technology director. The company says the design gives even radial force so the device opens fully and lands where it is placed, and that its delivery system gives the surgeon control of the guidewire in small, twisting vessels. These claims rest on the company's own bench and animal data; no independent clinical comparison exists yet. When the company raised money in 2024 it said that "up to 35 per cent" of current device placements may have complications, according to Tech.eu; the source of that figure is not given.

CORDIS lists two patent applications filed under the project, one for the delivery system and one for "an expandable tube for deployment within a blood vessel". The company says on its website that it holds patents in Europe, the United States, China and Japan.

What OXIFLOW Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The award came from the first 2019 cut-off of the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot. The European Commission's list of SME Instrument Phase 2 winners names Oxford Endovascular Limited of Oxford as the only company on the OXIFLOW project. The grant agreement was signed on 27 June 2019 and the project ran from 1 June 2019 to 31 January 2024, CORDIS shows. Its plan had five steps: freeze the device design, move it to pilot manufacturing, finish pre-clinical testing, win regulatory and ethics approval, and run the 10-patient first-in-man study.

The final report, covering January 2023 to January 2024, is frank about what happened. A GLP animal study of the first-generation design showed "easy to perform deployments" and good conformity to the vessel wall, but wide-neck aneurysms closed more slowly than expected. The team responded with a dual-layer "Hybrid" design, which further animal studies showed to be "safe and effective with much better performance than the original design". Some device sizes were moved to pilot-line manufacture. The report ends with "a final GLP study is planned" before the first-in-human study, and adds that "more data will be required through a pivotal study to gain CE mark". Only this last period's report is published on CORDIS.

1. Device design freezePartialFirst design replaced by a dual-layer "Hybrid" design after animal results, per the final report.
2. Pilot-scale manufacturePartial"Specific device sizes" transferred to the pilot line.
3. Pre-clinical testingDeliveredBench, biocompatibility and GLP animal studies done; one more GLP study still planned in January 2024.
4. Regulatory and ethics approvalsNot publicNo approval for a human study announced.
5. 10-patient first-in-man studyNot deliveredNot started by project end; no study registered on ClinicalTrials.gov or announced since.

The grant paid for real engineering. The animal studies found a weakness in the first design and the company fixed it, which is what pre-clinical work is for. But the human study was the project's central deliverable, the step the CORDIS summary calls "FIM study implementation", and the project ended without it. In April 2021, almost two years into the grant, the company told UKTN that its new money would "gain first-in-human data through an early feasibility clinical study". In May 2024 it was still "approaching First-In-Human trials", Parkwalk reported. No date for the study has been given in any source found.

What Oxford Endovascular Has Achieved Since the Award

The EU grant came with private money. In April 2021 a $10 million Series A was led by Vulpes Investment Management, with Oxford Sciences Innovation, Parkwalk Advisors, Perivoli Innovations, the University of Oxford and others following on, according to UKTN and Oxford Science Park. Sources differ on the sterling figure: UKTN gives about £7.2 million and Parkwalk's 2024 release £7.5 million. The 2021 accounts record £7,484,685 of new share capital in that financial year.

The same 2021 announcements list a £350,000 Innovate UK Smart Grant, won in November 2020, and €500,000 of COVID-era European funding received "in exchange for options". Tech.eu describes it as an EIT-funded COVID rescue programme, and the company's news page reports support from EIT Health in 2020. The accounts carry such funding received "in exchange for options granted to subscribe for ordinary shares" as a liability.

In May 2024 an £8 million Series A+ followed. Parkwalk Advisors put in £4.2 million, alongside Norcliffe Capital, Oxford Science Enterprises, Vulpes and the University of Oxford, according to Parkwalk and Tech.eu. The 2024 accounts record £7,741,381 of shares issued in that year. The company was also one of 50 start-ups picked for the MedTech Innovator programme in 2022, its news page says. No customer, revenue or regulatory approval has been reported; as a pre-clinical company it has none to report.

The Money

The company files small-company accounts without a revenue line. Its net loss grew from £1,055,077 in 2019/20 to a peak of £2,936,320 in 2023/24, and the six years to September 2025 add up to £12.98 million of losses. By 30 September 2025 shareholders had paid £19,926,538 in share premium, against an accumulated deficit of £16,065,354, the 2025 accounts show. One oddity: the 2019 accounts give net assets of £1,673,853, while the 2020 accounts restate the 2019 figure as £1,522,364.

Cash follows the funding rounds: up to £7.82 million after the 2021 round, down to £2.80 million two years later, up to £7.92 million after the 2024 round, and £5.16 million at the last year end. At the 2024/25 loss rate that covers about two years, before the cost of a human study and a much larger pivotal trial for a CE mark.

Why Europe Should Care

The project's final report forecasts that the device could prevent more than 300 deaths and 800 cases of severe disability and save about €240 million in welfare costs. Those are the company's projections, not measured results. The more concrete European interest is regulatory. Under the EU Medical Device Regulation, implantable and class III devices such as a brain flow diverter need clinical investigations before they reach the market, as IPN's summary of Article 61 notes. That makes early clinical data the gate for any new design, and it is exactly the step the EIC grant was meant to fund.

Oxford Endovascular won its award while the United Kingdom was still in Horizon 2020. The UK became an associated country of Horizon Europe from 1 January 2024, according to UKRO, so British companies can again take part in EU research funding on the same terms as other associated countries. A UK-built device that reaches the clinic would still need EU approval to be sold in the single market.

The Verdict

Oxford Endovascular has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.