Trukera Medical, whose executive chairman is well-known Orange County executive Jim Mazzo, announced last month that it has been acquired by global eye health company Bausch + Lomb Corp. for an undisclosed amount.
As part of the deal, Bausch + Lomb will help scale commercialization of Trukera’s ScoutPro Osmolarity System, a device that measures tear osmolarity, or the salt content of a person’s tears, to help diagnose dry eye disease.
ScoutPro was the first product launched under the company’s new name when it rebranded from TearLab Corp. to Trukera in 2022, reflecting the company’s desire to expand more into corneal health, according to officials.
“It’s rewarding that the direction we wanted to take has been validated by Bausch + Lomb,” Chief Executive Adam Szaronos told the Business Journal.
Mazzo was a long-time executive at Allergan and CEO of its spin-off, Advanced Medical Optics, which was eventually bought in 2009 for about $2.8 billion by Abbott Laboratories.
While Mazzo is stepping down from the Trunkera board, he remains busy as current executive chairman for Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, a retinal implant company; executive chair at Centricity Vision and serves on the boards of LensGen and Iantrek. Mazzo is also involved in several nonprofits, including as a co-founder of Octane, a job accelerator known for helping thousands of startups in Orange County.
Mazzo described Orange County as the “mecca for ophthalmology,” being home to the aesthetic operations for AbbVie Inc., Irvine-based Tarsus Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Aliso Viejo-based Glaukos Corp.
Mazzo Convinces Bausch CEO
Mazzo first proposed the idea of an acquisition to Bausch + Lomb CEO Brent Saunders after meeting about a year and a half ago at Octane’s Ophthalmology Tech Forum.
At the time, Bausch + Lomb had just acquired an eyedrop for dry eye disease called Xiidra, as well as other assets, from Novartis in a deal valued at $2.5 billion.
Mazzo told Saunders, that Trukera’s ScoutPro would complement Bausch + Lomb’s surgical portfolio.
“I said, ‘Let us show you that our strategy and customer plan is working, and then let’s revisit,’” Mazzo said. “Sure enough, that’s what occurred.”
The device has the potential to improve the performance of new intraocular lenses being developed by companies such as Aliso Viejo-based RxSight Inc., Mazzo added.
“If you have a bad ocular surface, you just don’t get the productivity of the intraocular lens,” Mazzo said.
While Mazzo is stepping down from the board, he remains busy as current executive chairman for Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, a retinal implant company; executive chair at Centricity Vision and serves on the boards of LensGen and Iantrek.
Edge: Portable Osmometer
Trukera, which counts a team of 15 sales representatives, is getting a significant boost with the acquisition, joining Bausch + Lomb’s 13,000 global employees.
“They can put the scale behind the business that we have built in a way that we could never dream of doing,” Szaronos said.
Trukera’s ScoutPro takes a tear sample similar to urine or blood, then runs a laboratory analysis and generates results all within 15 seconds, according to Szaronos. It’s said to be the first and only portable osmolarity system in the U.S., which could help clinics with high patient volumes.
“Now it doesn’t need to be stationary anymore,” Mazzo said. “The tech puts it in his or her jacket, and they can walk around and do numerous tests quickly.”
Szaronos was at Alcon (NYSE: ALC), the world’s largest eye care device company, in several roles including head of dry eye devices for 12 years before being recruited by Mazzo to join Trukera as CEO.
At the time, Trukera was largely a dry eye diagnostics company, and Szaronos was brought on to reposition the company’s research and development and pipeline to also cater to cataract and refractive surgeries.
