| DEALFLOWUPDATE Issue #22. Friday, December 21 Hello readers, Welcome to our final newsletter of 2018! The past year was a huge success for our readership and we would like to roll into 2019 stronger than ever. Please share this newsletter with anyone who may be interested, you can easily use our social links below. For this edition of our newsletter, we’ll be looking at a variety of deals, as the theme this time will be not one particular category of technology or company, but the different fields that we are actively currently pursuing. Although these vary in their technology, market and even commercialization route, they all potentially fit our thesis of platform, IP-centric major innovations. Happy holidays, -Neal P.S. Our readership continues to grow! please subscribe if you’re new and continue to share with others on social media. Connect with us, we would love to hear from you! |
Dealflow |
| Medtronic inks deal to acquire nutrition tech group Nutrino Health To start with, we have mentioned many times our interest in molecular and personal diagnostics, mainly for medical use. However, we are also particularly interested in diagnostics that have a consumer use, and in fact are a primary route to this market. These consumer uses can include prenatal care and nutrition; in nutrition, molecular information can be used to guide people’s decision and give immediate feedback on how a particular regimen is proceeding. Furthermore, such use can springboard the diagnostics into more medical-centric, but higher regulatory required fields such as diabetes testing. Even the large industry players are actively looking for and acquiring companies in this field. Read More  |
| CarThera: ultrasound-based medical devices to treat brain disorders, closes $10.3M funding round Another field that we are interested in is using noninvasive methods and energy sources to actively modulate neural activity. This has been mentioned previously, but such technologies can be used for a wide range of uses. Although the usual focus is on diagnosing and treating mental conditions or brain disorders. Read More |
 Axonics adds $18m to $120m IPO There are also promising uses in treating digestive and muscle function. Such methods can match pharmaceutical methods of action without potential side effects. Several companies are proceeding well in this category, with several recent acquisitions and IPOs. Read More |
 Sleep disorder device company Nyxoah raises $17m A related field to neuro-stimulation is somewhat the opposite; that of neural suppression, so to speak, specifically for mental conditions and even sleep therapy. Noninvasive therapies with the right platform approach can help treat cases in which there is an excess of unwanted brain activity; this can include severe medical cases such as epilepsy, or even consumer uses for enabling better sleep. Read More |
 ViaCyte raises $80M for stem cell-based diabetes treatment Finally, a field that we have perhaps not mentioned as much but is still interesting is stem cell therapy. Although stem cells themselves can be highly regulated depending on their application, a number of uses can offer significant potential clinical or even research opportunities without as much regulatory risk. For example, stem cells from a patient’s own blood do not have to go through major regulatory hurdles, yet have major potential healing benefits. These therapies and products can also be licensed for pharmaceutical research use for next-generation cell therapies. Read More |
Spotlight #ZoicPortfolio Highlighted first in this issue is Juno Dx and their team building in-home testing using simple non-invasive devices to provide insights into women’s and family health. Juno Diagnostics was born from a team of people that previously transformed clinical medicine at Sequenom, Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM), where they pioneered the first noninvasive cell-free DNA based prenatal test in the United States. Since 2011, these noninvasive prenatal tests have helped millions of families along their pregnancy journey. Other accomplishments include development of leading genetic testing tools and applications in epigenetics, inherited diseases, and cancer diagnostics. Visit Juno Dx We sat down with Dirk van dem Boom, Co-Founder and CEO, to talk about molecular diagnostics and Juno Dx’s go to market strategy as well as how he looks at molecular diagnostics from the standpoint that diagnostics has made incredible advancements in the amounts of data information that can be generated, but the utility of precision health measurements for the general public has remained behind. Furthermore, he explains four main barriers that impede diagnostics adoption and how Juno Dx is building strategies for breakthroughs in diagnostics testing and care. |
| Our second company highlight is ODS Medical, a medical device company pushing the limits of cancer detection with an exclusive Raman spectroscopy system for real-time tissue characterization for a range of clinical settings. Developing an AI-enabled optical detection system for tumor margin assessment the system is able to detect cancer cells that were previously undetectable using conventional imaging modalities like MRI or CT, ODS Medical provides surgeons the ability to reduce rates of left behind cancer and more effective surgeries with fewer unwanted side effects. Visit ODS Medical Christopher Kent, ODS Medical’s President and CEO spoke with us about his company’s values and the pursuit of an AI-enabled optical detection system. |
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| The Biweekly Dealflow Update, curated by the team at Zoic Capital. |
