Acutus Medical Raises $75M to Map Abnormal Currents of the Heart

A "basket" catheter developed by San Diego’s Acutus Medical creates 3D images of the inner chambers of the heart. (Acutus Medical photo)

Acutus Medical, a suburban San Diego medical device maker with new technology for diagnosing and treating irregular heartbeats, said today it has closed on $75 million in Series C funding.

The all-equity round includes new investors Deerfield Management, Xeraya Capital, and an undisclosed strategic investor. Advent Life Sciences, the company’s founding investor, also joined the round, along with existing backers OrbiMed and GE Ventures. The transaction brings the company’s total funding to $125 million, Acutus CEO Randy Werneth said by phone yesterday.

Acutus, based in Carlsbad, CA, about 35 miles north of downtown San Diego, says its AcQMap technology provides a 3-D, high-resolution image of the heart’s interior, and maps its electrical activity. Acutus creates this computerized map by threading a sensor-laden “basket” catheter through a major blood vessel and into the heart.

“We have a system and technology that is evidence-based,” Werneth said, explaining that the device can pinpoint the origin of irregular electrical signals for doctors in real-time. Heart doctors also can use the AcQMap to guide the tip of another catheter to the site, enabling them to precisely zap heart tissue with radio energy that cauterizes the spot—forming scar tissue that silences the irregular electrical impulse.

Randy Werneth
Randy Werneth

The AcQMap generates a new map of the heart after each burst of radio energy, enabling doctors to confirm how the treatment has changed the electrical signals. In a statement this morning, the company says, “This real-time feedback loop can continue until the [electro-physiologist] is satisfied that the therapy and the procedure have been successful.”

Boston Scientific, St. Jude Medical, Abbott, and others are developing competing technologies.

Acutus plans to use the additional financing “to finish our product development and build out our sales force in Europe,” Werneth said. Acutus has been awaiting regulatory approval for AcQMap in Europe, and has been planning its commercial launch there later this year.

The company plans to seek regulatory approval in the United States in early 2017, he added.

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.