A Scottish technology firm which is developing a new generation of heart implants has raised £1.2m equity and debt funding despite the gloom prevailing in funding markets.

A Scottish technology firm which is developing a new generation of heart implants has raised £1.2m equity and debt funding despite the gloom prevailing in funding markets.

Tayside Flow Technologies won an unspecified amount of further backing from existing equity funders including Sir Tom Farmer, the Kwik Fit entrepreneur, and the Brave- heart and Quayle Munro investment businesses.

Management and private investors also provided equity funding, while the company secured debt facilities from Royal Bank of Scotland.

The money will allow the company to complete the registration and commercialisation of a range of products developed with its pioneering technology. This recreates the way blood flows through natural media like arteries in artificial replacements.

The company says by reducing bloodflow turbulence and disturbance in implants such as grafts and stents, the technology improves the effectiveness and lifespan of the devices.

With cardiovascular disease the number one killer in the US and the UK, the company said the market for its products is estimated to be around £11bn.

Tayside has incorporated the technology in a peripheral graft used to bypass blocked or poorly functioning arteries.

This has been launched in several European markets.

The company expects to license the product in the US in the first half of 2009.

Chief executive David Lawrence said the funding round reflected the progress the company had made.

Tayside Flow Technologies was formed in 1998 out of Dundee's Ninewells Hospital, by three heart specialists led by Peter Stonebridge, a consultant vascular surgeon, to commercialise research on the way blood flowed in arteries.