The SPARK Impact-managed North West Fund for Biomedical has backed Lancashire-based LumbaCurve International.

Medical business LumbaCurve is set to relocate its operations to the biomedical cluster at Liverpool Science Park.

It has developed a patented device to provide relief to sufferers of lower back pain and will carry out its planned market development and clinical effectiveness study at the University of Central Lancashire’s Movement Analysis Laboratory.

The transaction is the 31st that The North West Fund for Biomedical has closed. The £25 million fund is a sub-fund of The North West Fund, which is provided by the European Investment Bank and the European Regional Development Fund.

David Pegg, director of LumbaCurve, says that LumbaCurve has ‘struggled’ to raise finance from the usual channels.

‘Although LumbaCurve has demonstrated time and time again that it works for back pain sufferers, we need to establish empirical evidence of its effectiveness in the treatment of back pain,’ Pegg adds.

‘We hope this could open up potential opportunities to the worldwide healthcare market, which is looking for a back pain relief product that works.’

Earlier in January, The North West Fund for Biomedical announced that it had invested more than £10 million in SMEs across a range of biomedical areas.

Penny Attridge, senior investment director at SPARK Impact and manager of the fund, comments, ‘Back pain is an endemic problem in western society with an estimated 40 per cent of adults experiencing the problem.

‘LumbaCurve is an exciting product, which may have a genuine impact not only on how we treat lower back pain in the UK, but globally.’