"Knee-surgery devices maker raises $50m" by Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | July 13, 2009
A Burlington medical device company, ConforMIS Inc., is set to disclose today that it has raised $50 million from a consortium of private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, one of the largest investments in a Massachusetts life sciences company this year.
Then why did they need a billion dollars of borrowed money?
The company will use the money to expand its product line in the growing field of knee resurfacing, a potential $6 billion market, said Philipp Lang, ConforMIS’s chief executive. The company, founded in 2004, will also build up its sales force in the United States and Europe.
ConforMIS, with about 100 employees worldwide, including more than 60 at its Burlington headquarters, takes its name from products that conform to patients’ knees and require minimally invasive surgery. It has introduced three implants used in partial knee replacements and plans to seek approval next year for a total knee replacement product.
Unlike standard off-the-shelf implants, which require cutting into bone to make them fit, ConforMIS’s products are custom implants, packaged with custom instruments to place them in patients.
“We shape the implant, tailor-made, to the patient,’’ Lang said. He said the implants are used for treatment of knee osteoarthritis in people with sports injuries or other trauma. The company uses proprietary software to convert images from MRI or CT scans into digital form, build three-dimensional model knees, and design the implants.
ConforMIS does not disclose the price of its implants for competitive reasons, but the cost of traditional knee replacement surgery ranges from $4,000 to $6,000 in the United States.
“Our entire business strategy is to take technology that’s been developed and used in manufacturing over the past decade and mix it with our intellectual property to produce implants that are cost-competitive with mass-produced orthopedics,’’ said Jong Lee, senior vice president.
The investment is the fourth round of funding for ConforMIS, which has raised more than $80 million over the past five years. Its private equity investors are led by Aeris Capital of Zurich. Sovereign wealth funds from Singapore and Kuwait are participating.
I'm not opposed to people getting new knees (taxpayers gonna need 'em); however, I am hurt that money is available to so many well-connected interests while Americans suffer.
As funding for entrepreneurial companies has slowed over the past six months, there have been only a handful of other large financing rounds in the life sciences business in Massachusetts. Last month, four global pharmaceutical companies joined forces to provide $40 million to Aileron Therapeutics of Cambridge, a biotechnology start-up.
Also see: The Therapeutic Rip-Off
In March, BioVex Group Inc. of Woburn, which develops vaccines for cancer and chronic infectious diseases, raised just over $40 million.
--more--"Know where they got the $$$, right?
See: Debt-Loving Americans
