Life Sciences
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Panda Surgical is a clinical-stage medical device company developing the first handheld robotic platform for minimally invasive neurosurgery.
Panda’s handheld robot design addresses two structural gaps large incumbent surgical robots cannot close: capital cost/ surgical theatre footprint, and instrument scale in confined neuro-anatomy.
- The robotic neurosurgery market is projected to grow from ~$405M (2024) to ~$1.67B (2034) at 15.7% CAGR, with handheld economics expanding the addressable buyer universe beyond capital-equipped tertiary centres.
- Handheld design removes the multi-million-dollar capex and dedicated theatre footprint that confine cart-based systems to high-volume centres.
- Miniaturised wristed instruments enable robotic dexterity in skull base, pituitary, and deep-brain corridors where 5mm+ incumbent end-effectors physically cannot operate.
- Recent addition of exited OrganOx CEO, Craig Marshal, as an NED adds seasoned medtech commercialisation experience to the board.
- Founders are robotic surgery key opinion leaders: CMO Prof Hani Marcus is first author and Chair of the IDEAL Collaboration, the Nature Medicine-published global standard for surgical-robot evaluation.
- Validated technical progress: successful in-vivo preclinical study completed.
Dr Manios Dimitrakakis - Professor Hani Marcus
CEO - CMO
Leadership Profile
Founded in 2022 as a spinout from University College London (UCL) by CEO Dr Manios Dimitrakakis, alongside co-founders Professor Hani Marcus (CMO) – Professor of Neurosurgery at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology – and Professor Danail Stoyanov – Professor of Robot Vision at UCL and a serial medtech entrepreneur with a prior exit to Olympus.
