[Updated 3/30/17, 2:12 pm. See below.] Boston Scientific is acquiring Swiss company Symetis, the latest move made by the medical device giant to strengthen its portfolio of minimally invasive heart valve replacement products.
Marlborough, MA-based Boston Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:BSX]]) will pay $435 million in upfront cash to Symetis. With the deal in place, Symetis has halted its plans to raise up to $66 million from an initial public stock offering on Paris’ Euronext Exchange.
Founded in 2001, Symetis makes heart products for transcatheter aortic valve replacement, a minimally invasive procedure that uses a catheter to deploy a valve that takes over for an old, damaged one. The company has commercialized two heart valve systems: the Acurate TA and the Acurate neo/TF valve. Both are sold in Europe and some other markets, but not the U.S. The company also has an investigational next generation valve system that is currently in clinical testing.
Boston Scientific has its own heart valve replacement technology, the Lotus Valve System, which comes from its 2011 acquisition of Los Gatos, CA-based Sadra Medical for $193 million. European regulators approved Lotus in 2013 and cleared a newer version of the device last September. But neither system is yet available in the U.S., where the devices still await a regulatory decision from the FDA. Boston Scientific does not break down sales figures for individual products but the Lotus is part of the company’s interventional cardiology division, which accounted for $2.2 billion in 2016 sales—nearly 27 percent of the company’s $8.3 billion in net revenue last year. Boston Scientific previously said it expected to launch Lotus in the U.S. in late 2017. In Boston Scientific’s annual report, the company updated the timing, saying it planned to file for U.S. approval in the fourth quarter of 2017 with a U.S. launch expected by mid-2018. [Paragraph updated to clarify the expected timing of Lotus regulatory developments.]
The Symetis deal comes nearly four months after Boston Scientific paid $75 million to acquire some of the assets of Neovasc (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NVCN]]), a Vancouver, BC-based company that manufactures components used in Lotus.
In a prepared statement, Ian Meredith, Boston Scientific’s chief medical officer, said that the Symetis devices complement the Lotus product line. The deal helps Boston Scientific offer cardiologists and surgeons multiple options for heart valve replacement surgeries that can address the range of medical and anatomical differences found in patients.
Boston Scientific expects to close the Symetis acquisition during the second quarter.
Photo by Flickr user Robbie Sproule via Creative Commons license.
