The European Investment Bank is backing a breast implant that is designed to disappear. The EU lender has committed up to €20M to Tensive, a Milan-based medical device company, to push its resorbable REGENERA implant through regulatory approval and into European clinics.
The money arrives as a convertible loan in two tranches of €8M and €12M, each running 20 years, and covers about half of Tensive’s €40M financing plan. The company is raising additional equity to fund development and launch work in Europe and the United States, with the EIB facility supported by the European Commission’s InvestEU program.
The technology targets women who undergo lumpectomy, the breast-conserving surgery in which a tumor is removed but the breast is otherwise kept. Tensive’s scaffold fills the resulting gap and then dissolves over time; the body’s own tissue moves in as the material disappears, preserving volume and shape without a permanent device or a second procedure.
Clinical momentum backs the loan. Twelve-month results from a pivotal trial of 94 patients, reported in July, showed good-to-excellent cosmetic outcomes in 94.2% of evaluable cases, and five-year follow-up from an earlier study found persistent volume replacement, gradual resorption and no capsule formation.
Tensive expects its first European approval as early as 2027 and estimates that about 1.6 million women a year currently lack viable reconstruction options after lumpectomy. Chief executive Sanjay Kakkar said the EIB commitment anchors the company’s equity financing as it closes in on commercial launch.
