to help clients track foot traffic and other activity in physical spaces, such as stores. The startup reportedly has 150 customers worldwide, most of which are retailers. They pay anywhere from $20 to $1,000 a month to use Scanalytics’ tools, according to The AP.
—Mequon-based Titan Spine, which sells surgical implants for spinal procedures, raised $7.8 million from investors. The titanium implants (or “cages”) Titan Spine develops are designed to stabilize a patient’s spinal cord after the patient has had damaged vertebrae surgically removed, to name one application. Peter Ullrich, co-founder and CEO of Titan Spine, says its latest line of implants, which feature a nanotextured surface technology, have been used in more than 5,000 procedures since the company introduced them in mid-2016.
—Several employees of Salus Discovery, a company spun out of research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will visit collaborators in Ethiopia and South Africa this spring to validate patient samples using the company’s urine-based diagnostic test for tuberculosis, the school said. Many of the tests used to diagnose tuberculosis today reportedly require a saliva-and-mucus sample from the patient’s respiratory tract, which can be expensive and time-consuming to collect. David Beebe, a UW-Madison biomedical engineering professor who co-founded Salus in 2013, said he and others at the startup “think this new technology may soon not only detect [tuberculosis] in urine, but also diagnose many other conditions in both the developing and developed world.”
—Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARWR]]) said it plans to raise up to $52.5 million through a public offering of shares of the company’s common stock. Arrowhead is developing a number of drug candidates aimed at treating chronic hepatitis B virus, rare diseases resulting from alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and other conditions. The company is headquartered in Pasadena, CA, but houses its research and development operations in Madison.
—The Milwaukee Business Journal profiled Civorium, a startup that has developed a free mobile app allowing users to post alerts and receive data like garbage and recycling schedules, election information, and notifications about community events. Civorium’s founder is Nick Fuchs, who reportedly works as a city planner for the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin. Fuchs believes there’s value in having a forum where citizens can report things like malfunctioning traffic lights and coyote sightings, the newspaper reported.
