Medtronic To Pick Up Ablation Frontiers for $225 Million Upfront

Medtronic (NYSE: [[ticker:MDT]]) says it has inked a deal to acquire Carlsbad, CA’s Ablation Frontiers, which has been developing a medical device for treating heart arrhythmias. Medtronic will make pay an initial $225 million for the firm, and may make additional payments if certain milestones are met.

Medtronic, the Minneapolis medical equipment maker, plans to integrate Ablation Frontiers with a unit focused on providing safer, simpler, and more effective ways for treating atrial fibrillation, a heart-rhythm problem that affects about 3 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide.

Medtronic plans to combine Ablation Frontiers with another recent acquisition, CryoCath Technologies, which specializes in a “cryoablation” treatment for arrhythmias, in which errant heart cells are killed by freezing. Ablation Frontiers has been developing a catheter-based technology that uses radiofrequency energy to zap the troublesome cells.

Ablation Frontiers gained approval to market its radiofrequency system in the European Union in 2006, and the company is now conducting a clinical trial as a step toward at gaining FDA approval for the device as a treatment for atrial fibrillation in the United States.

Medtronic’s buyout of Ablation Frontiers is subject to regulatory approval. In an announcement, the two companies said that Ablation Frontiers’ shareholders have already approved the deal. The privately held company listed its investors as Aberdare Ventures, Affinity Ventures, Hexagon Investments, Novartis Bioventures, Pequot Ventures, Trellis Health Ventures, Venture Lending & Leasing III, Versant Ventures, and WS Investment Company.

The transaction is expected to close in Medtronic’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ends April 24.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.