Ysios sells medical technology company Endosense for €249.7 millions
US-based St. Jude Medical has purchased 100% of Endosense, a pioneer in developing catheters with pressure-sensor technology for cardiac arrhythmias.
By Biocat
Venture-capital fund manager Ysios Capital has announced the sale of Swiss medical-device company Endosense to multinational St. Jude Medical for €249.7 millions. This operation is another divestment of the manager’s first fund, Ysios BioFund I, and will bring them 3.3 times return on the capital invested. The first divestment was Biovex in 2011.
Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, head of investment at Endosense and founding partner of Ysios, believes that the best news is that “this operation confirms that investing in the biomedical arena can generate clear benefits for society, as well as return on investment.”
Ysios invested €26 millions in Endosense initially in 2009 along with other international investors like Edmond de Rothschild, GIMV and Neomed and recently supported the company again in a capital increase led by NGN capital for €30 millions.
Endosense’s main product is TactiCath, a catheter for ablation treatment of pathologies related to cardiac arrhythmias, including auricular fibrillation, which is the most common and affects more than 6 million people around the world. This device is innovative as it features sensors providing doctors with real-time information on the force applied at the time of the ablation.
St. Jude Medical will launch TactiCath in the United States in 2014 after cardiologist Valentín Fuster has carried out a clinical trial, as Josep Lluís Sanfeliu explained to the newspaper Expansión. TactiCath is already available on the European market.
The Ysios portfolio of investments currently includes AM Pharma (Netherlands), Cardoz (Sweden), TiGenix (Belgium), MedLumics (Spain) and Catalan companies Inbiomotion and STAT-Diagnostica.