Sutura Inc., a Fountain Valley medical device maker that’s looking to take on the industry’s big names in a surgery niche, has gone public via a backdoor route.
The company did so by combining with Technology Visions Group Inc., a research and development company in San Marcos, which had traded on the low-profile Bulletin Board exchange. Sutura now trades under “SUTU” on the Bulletin Board.
Last year, Sutura planned to join forces with publicly traded Millennium Holding Group, a Las Vegas-based company. But that deal fell through.
Company officials said they’re gearing up to push Sutura’s core product, the SuperStitch, which is used to stitch together punctures made to the groin’s femoral artery during catheter-based heart and radiology procedures.
Sutura is targeting catheter labs, cardiologists and radiologists with SuperStitch.
“It’s a big market,we’re talking about a market that has the potential of more than a billion dollars” yearly, said Anthony Nobles, Sutura’s founder and chief executive, in an earlier Business Journal interview.
Nobles started Sutura in 1996 with Egbert Ratering, who previously worked for Cordis, a device maker that’s now part of Johnson & Johnson.
The duo sought investment from friends and family, including John Tu and David Sun, cofounders of Fountain Valley-based computer memory products maker Kingston Technology Co.
“John, being an old friend of mine, stepped up and offered to help,” Nobles said, mentioning that he met Tu and Sun back when the trio were starting up businesses on a stretch of Harbor Boulevard.
Inspired by Opus
KFx Medical Corp., a medical device maker based in Carlsbad, received $6.2 million worth of venture capital funding late last month.
Charter Life Sciences LP of Palo Alto is the lead investor in KFx, which is developing a minimally invasive method for rotator cuff surgery.
Arboretum Ventures of Ann Arbor, Mich., Montreux Equity Partners of Menlo Park and MB Venture Partners LLC, a Memphis, Tenn.-based firm, joined Charter in the deal.
Tate Scott, KFx’s chief executive, told The Deal, a venture capital news site, that Opus Medical Inc., a San Juan Capistrano-based device company, had made “significant advances” in developing less-invasive techniques to repair rotator-cuff shoulder injuries.
“Tying knots through a straw is very difficult,” Scott told The Deal of reattaching rotator cuffs using arthroscopic surgery. “Opus advanced the art of surgery using improved sutures.”
Opus was founded in 1999 and raised $23.7 million in venture funding, including from Three Arch Partners of Portola Valley, Apax Partners’ Menlo Park office, Prospect Venture Partners of Palo Alto and individual investors.
ArthroCare Corp. of Sunnyvale bought Opus in late 2004 for $130 million.
As for KFx, Scott said that it plans to submit its technique to the Food and Drug Admin-istration early next year and hopes to have it available to patients in the second half of 2006.
KFx’s deal had another Orange County connection,Ned Israelsen and Ryan Melnick from the San Diego office of Irvine-based Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP provided patent counsel for the company.
Ambryx Moves to Riverside
Medical technology companies often look to base themselves in prime parts of California, including OC.
But Ambryx Biotechnology Inc., a privately funded developer of cancer treatments that was started seven years ago, recently moved its headquarters from Irvine to Riverside. Ambryx has seven patents on cancer and anti-inflammatory drugs, and is planning to file an investigative new drug application next year with the FDA.
In a release, Helen Chen, Ambryx’s vice president of business development, cited lower costs, incentives and a “business friendly environment” as its reason for moving the company.
“We first looked at relocating to an established technology-based city such as San Francisco or Boston,” Chen said.
Instead, Riverside won out because of things such as lower rents, more flexible lease terms and what Chen called “a great source of people and knowledge” at the University of California, Riverside, which may not readily come to mind when it comes to technology.
UCR has developed a research park in order to support small and expanding technology companies.
Bits and Pieces:
Beckman Coulter Inc., Fullerton, signed a deal with Princeton BioMeditech Corp., Princeton, N.J., under which Princeton will supply diagnostic tests to Beckman Coulter’s primary care diagnostics unit. Princeton makes simple diagnostic tests for fertility management, cardiac markers and drugs tests MemorialCare Medical Centers elected Dr. Santos Cortez, a dentist, and James Hankla, the former city manager of Long Beach, to its board of directors. MemorialCare’s hospitals include Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, Fountain Valley, and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, Laguna Hills Cobalis Corp., Irvine, said that third-phase clinical results for PreHistin, an allergy medication it’s developing, said preseasonal treatment with the drug helped reduce allergic symptoms in trial participants.
