Kerecis Secures $16 Million Series C Funding to Advance Fish-Skin Implant Technology for Regenerative Medicine

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that on June 13 local time, Icelandic medical technology company Kerecis completed a $16 million Series C financing round. The funds will be used to support the company’s in-depth research and development of fish skin implant technology, helping damaged skin restore biological activity.

Kerecis, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, is a medical technology company dedicated to tissue regeneration therapies using fish skin.

Regarding skin injuries, the primary treatment in the medical field currently involves harvesting healthy skin from the patient and grafting it onto the damaged area. When the injury covers an extensive area, medical professionals may need to implant synthetic products, such as cryopreserved medical-grade porcine skin. This approach not only increases the total area of skin trauma but also requires careful management of biocompatibility between the porcine skin and the patient’s own tissue to prevent rejection reactions. Patients undergoing skin grafting must also take prescribed medications regularly to support proper function of the grafted site and maintain physiological homeostasis.

Traditional skin grafting surgery can only help patients cover damaged areas and prevent the spread of injured tissue to avoid affecting other parts. Since the transplanted skin does not fully match the original tissue, it cannot replace the original skin and tissue in performing all functions. It can only ensure, as much as possible, that subcutaneous tissues and various bodily functions are protected from external pathogenic infections, thereby maintaining basic human functions. However, important functions such as sweating and white blood cell production cannot be performed by the transplanted skin.

Kerecis’s flagship product, Kerecis Omega3, is an intact, bioactive medical-grade fish skin rich in natural omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. When grafted onto damaged human tissues, such as burns or diabetic wounds, the material recruits the patient’s own cells to repair the injured site, restoring the skin and underlying tissues to a healthy state.

This fish skin exhibits excellent biocompatibility and bioactivity, while being free of extraneous cells and tissues. Upon implantation, it rapidly integrates with healthy human skin and subcutaneous tissue, recruiting various cell populations essential for tissue regeneration from the host body. By leveraging the body’s intrinsic repair mechanisms, it facilitates patient recovery. Furthermore, as the repaired skin accumulates these regenerative cell populations, it no longer requires pharmaceuticals or medical devices to maintain its bioactivity after healing, becoming indistinguishable from normal skin.

Currently, the FDA has approved Kerecis Omega3 SecureMesh as a surgical scaffold in the United States for use in lung, bariatric, gastric, colorectal, and other reconstructive surgeries.

G. Fertram Sigurjonsson, Founder and CEO of Kerecis, stated, “Traditional medicine holds that porcine skin is the animal tissue most compatible with human skin; however, advances in modern healthcare have demonstrated that fish skin is better suited for patients with skin damage. Currently, fish skin is becoming a mainstream therapy for treating severely damaged skin. We are deeply grateful to both new and existing investors for their support. We will leverage the funds raised in this round to continuously innovate our biotechnology, helping patients recover their health as quickly as possible.”

(Compiled by Liu Yujing)