US-Israeli vascular robotic start-up Corindus Inc. has raised $4.7 million out of a planned $10 million third financing round. The company is developing remote cardiology navigation and catheterization devices.
The capital was listed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a possible future IPO.
Corindus's main product, CorPath enables physicians to control the movements of catheters through arteries during angioplasties with a joystick at a workstation just outside of the operating room. The CorPath system avoids physicians' exposure to radiation, since under present angioplasties, the doctor has to be in proximity to the X-ray machine in order to place the catheter. As a consequence, these physicians have a 5% greater risk of cancer than other doctoers.
The CorPath resembles a catheterization simulator, but can carry out the actual procedure.
Corindus was founded as NaviCath by Prof. Rafael Beyar and COO Tal Wenderow at Technion Seed (formerly Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Co.) in 2002 and moved to the Boston suburb of Natick in 2005. Beyar is a top cardiologist at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and co-founded other cardiology related start-ups with Prof. Shlomo Ben-Haim and Lewis Pell's Medinvest, including Instent Ltd. (acquired by Medtronic Inc. (NYSE: MDT) in 1996) and Influence Medical Technologies Ltd. (acquired by American Medical Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: AMMD) in 1999).
Corindus raised $12.8 million in its second financing round in April 2008 from US venture capital funds Healthcare 20/20, HealthCor Management, Lewis Pell, and Rafael Beyar's brother Motti Beyar, a partner in Medinvest.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 23, 2009
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