TherOx Inc., an Irvine-based medical device maker in business for more than 20 years and with more than $150 million invested in it over its history, has been acquired, two months after the company received long-awaited Food and Drug Administration pre-market approval for a product designed as an alternative to traditional heart attack treatments.
Zoll Medical Corp., a Chelmsford, Mass.-based manufacturer of medical devices and related software, said last week that it had bought TherOx to broaden its portfolio of emergency cardiac care products.
Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Zoll was already a backer in TherOx. Last May, it had led a $15 million debt financing deal, with the money earmarked to fund TherOx’s market introduction and commercialization of its SuperSaturated Oxygen (SSO2) Therapy system.
SSO2 combines highly oxygenated saline with arterial blood from the patient, and delivers highly oxygenated blood to the heart in order to treat ischemic tissue.
The product is billed as an alternative to traditional heart attack treatments, such as angioplasty and stents. The device maker says it reduces diseased tissue more than those treatments can.
SSO2 “is intended to salvage heart muscle and reduce infarct size,” said TherOx Chief Executive and President Kevin Larkin. Infarct refers to tissue death, due to a lack of blood supply.
In particular, the company’s product is designed to treat patients who suffer the most serious kind of heart attacks, a left anterior descending ST-elevation myocardial infarction, known as the widowmaker.
The 60-minute SSO2 treatment is for use within six hours of the onset of heart attack symptoms.
TherOx thinks the product can also help patients suffering from certain types of strokes.
The Business Journal reported it got FDA approval for SSO2 in April, to treat heart attacks.
“Zoll and TherOx are both focused on emergency cardiac care,” said Neil Johnston, president of Zoll’s circulation division, in a statement. The deal “expands the Zoll product portfolio in support of excellence for patients and caregivers.”
“We are looking forward to becoming part of Zoll so that together we can bring this breakthrough treatment option to more patients sooner,” Larkin said.
$150M+
The sale is the latest chapter in TherOx, which formed in the mid-1990s; Larkin has served as chief executive since 2001.
The company has raised more than $150 million; early backers include Silicon Valley venture capital pioneer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, now known as Kleiner Perkins.
The company attempted to go public in 2008 and planned to raise close to $100 million, but like several other medical device and technology companies, ended up pulling the filing after the IPO markets and the overall economy started to deteriorate.
Around that time, TherOx was also unsuccessful in its first attempts at getting FDA approval for its product.
An FDA advisory panel in 2009 nixed the company’s premarket approval application for SSO2, saying the device showed “only marginal benefit” and had potential for risks; the agency generally follows the recommendations of its panels.
In 2015, Larkin told the Business Journal that the company had been operating in more of a cash-preservation mode in recent years; at that time, it employed 12 workers. It manufactures its devices at a facility on Cartwright Road in the Irvine Business Complex.
“We’ve gotten the last several years behind us, [and] we’re on a good path now,” Larkin said in 2015.
Zoll Group
Zoll markets other medical devices pertaining to circulation monitoring, temperature management, circulation, CPR feedback, and external defibrillation devices.
It is part of the portfolio of Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei Group, and had a $1.4 billion market cap in 2012 before going private.
“We are looking forward to becoming part of Zoll so that together we can bring this breakthrough treatment option to more patients sooner,” Larkin said last week.
“No delay in door-to-balloon times and improved clinical outcomes is a combination we think physicians will find appealing,” Johnston said in a statement.
