“This round of financing is a clear demonstration of confidence in our strategic direction and ability to disrupt the electrophysiology space by delivering advanced, innovative technologies to our customers,” stated Vince Burgess, Acutus Medical’s chief executive officer.
Acutus Medical, headquartered in Carlsbad, California, announced it has raised $170 million financing. The money raised was split, $100 million Series D equity financing and a $70 million credit facility. The company plans to use it to accelerate commercialization and supports it global business development.
The Series D round included new investors 8VC, Opaleye Management, Pura Vida Investment and others. It also included support from existing investors OrbiMed, Deerfield Management Company, Advent Venture Partners, Xeraya Capital and GE Ventures. The credit facility was provided by OrbiMed Credit and Royalties Fund and Deerfield Management.
“This round of financing is a clear demonstration of confidence in our strategic direction and ability to disrupt the electrophysiology space by delivering advanced, innovative technologies to our customers,” stated Vince Burgess, Acutus Medical’s chief executive officer. “Advanced imaging, individualized therapy and increased procedural efficiency are needed components to progress the electrophysiology field. We are dedicated to improving every aspect of cardiac ablation, as evidenced by our recent closing of the acquisition of Rhythm Xience to provide a novel suite of products designed to improve the safety and speed of left atrial access.”
The company’s primary product is AcQMap, which utilizes ultrasound so physicians can see the cause of a patient’s irregular heartbeat. This is typically used during a procedure called ablation to treat arrhythmia. Cardiac ablation uses diagnostic catheters that are threaded through blood vessels to the heart, where they are used to map the heart’s electrical signals. They then use heat or extreme cold to destroy the tissue that is causing the problem.
Burgess told Xconomy, “It can be done in about 60 seconds … [which] gives the physician the ability to not only quickly diagnose what’s going on, but also, after they do their first series of therapeutic ablations … quickly remap and see what they did.”
Burgess is a venture partner with OrbiMed. Prior to OrbiMed, Burgess was with Volcano, another medical device company. Volcano was acquired in 2014 by Philips for $1.2 billion.
As part of the financing, the company plans to push its commercialization activities in the U.S. and Europe, as well as to expand its staff. The company currently employs about 150 people, with about 100 in San Diego County. By the end of the year the company plans to hire another 50.
It also plans to make more deals. In May it acquired Rhythm Xience, which offers an integrated family of user-friendly transseptal crossing and steerable introducer systems.
In addition to the Rhythm deal, it announced three strategic partnerships. The first was with Peerbridge Health, to offer the ambulatory ECG, The Peerbridge Cor, a wireless multi-channel ECG monitor the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved to detect up to 26 different arrhythmias.
It partnered with Cardiac Designs. Via this partnership, longer-term remote monitoring technology, the Acutus QCheck handheld ECG and mobile app, will be made available.
And finally, Acutus signed an exclusive agreement with MedFact to market its robotically enabled point RF ablation catheter that is used for the Stereotaxis robotic navigation system. The deal for the Sterotaxis system was announced earlier in the year.
