Santa Fe-based Vista Therapeutics Inc. is about to close on $1.5 million in new venture funding.

The company, which created a nanotechnology-based medical device to continuously monitor body fluids in trauma patients, closed on $200,000 from the New Mexico Angels and other individual investors on Dec. 31. Another $1.3 million will come from institutional investors, with a final close expected in early February, said Vista CEO Spencer Farr, Ph.D.

“The complete round is for $1.5 million,” Farr said. “We have all the money lined up, but we can’t disclose who the institutional investors are just yet.”

The company originally received $151,000 in seed funds from the NM Angels in 2008, followed by a $1 million investment in February 2009 from California-based TEL Venture Inc.

Vista spent the past year building out the technology and creating a prototype to begin marketing. The company’s rapid achievements have attracted a lot more investor interest, said NM Angels President John Chavez.

“The company has hit all its milestones,” Chavez said. “If you look at the technology and what the company has done with just a little funding, it’s pretty phenomenal.”

Vista’s device provides real-time snapshots of protein changes in trauma patients, allowing medical personnel to continuously assess an individual’s condition and measure responses to medication in trauma situations. That can significantly improve treatment, because today doctors must send blood, urine or other body fluid samples to labs for analysis.

“With this technology, instead of sending blood across the street, medical personnel can just look at a computer and see immediate results on a continuous basis,” Chavez said.

The device, called a NanoBioSensor, relies on electrically charged nanowires that, when lined with certain antigens, attract target proteins in body fluids.

Vista licensed the basic technology from Harvard University, which has an equity stake in the company. Charles Lieber, a professor in Harvard’s chemistry department and a Nobel Prize winner, created the nanowire technology and is now Vista’s chief scientific officer. Lieber has continued to develop the nanowire chips for the biosensor at Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems, Farr said.

ICX Technologies Inc. in Albuquerque developed the software, hardware and some of the packaging for the nano chips. ICX is providing its engineering services as part of a debt-equity investment in Vista, said ICX Vice President Chuck Call.

“We’re at a critical juncture,” Call said. “The prototypes are just about ready for customers. We’ll do one last iteration and then we’ll move forward.”

Farr said the prototypes are performing according to expectations.

“We built the first one and it works beautifully,” he said. “I believe we’ve resolved all the scientific risk. There’s still some manufacturing risk, because it’s a technical device with lots of steps that require specialized facilities, but engineering risk rarely represents an insurmountable wall.”

The new funds will allow Vista to start marketing to pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as well as doctors and clinical research centers.

“We’ll get it into the hands of big pharmas and other companies and let them play with the technology,” Call said. “That will generate a lot of first-hand customer feedback and intelligence on where to go from here.”

Farr said the first devices will be ready for “soft launch” in April. Vista will hire a salesperson and two senior development people to begin building strategic relationships with drug companies, manufacturers and others, Farr said.

The company currently has five employees, including two at a 1,500-square-foot space at the Santa Fe Business Incubator, and the rest at Cambridge. It plans to open a small office in Albuquerque near ICX to start doing some chip photolithography work that is now done at Harvard.

In the long-term, Vista will market its devices to point-of-care clinics and hospitals, but that will require approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For now, the company will target pre-clinic drug testing with laboratory animals.

“We don’t need FDA approval for clinical trial applications, research or animal experimentation, so we’ll approach those markets first,” Farr said. “Once we have demonstrable performance data for technology in the field, then we’ll start the FDA approval process.”

Vista plans to raise another $5 to $8 million in venture capital in late spring to launch a much more extensive marketing campaign, Farr said.