By DAVID YOUNG
Public Relations, Medtronic

WARSAW — Medtronic plc announced Monday, Sept. 28, it has acquired Lazarus Effect, a Campbell, Calif.-based, privately-held medical device company focused on acute ischemic stroke products that facilitate the capture and removal of clots.

The Lazarus Effect acquisition is an all-cash transaction of $100 million at closing.

“With this acquisition, Medtronic reinforces its commitment to providing innovative solutions to clinicians and patients fighting stroke,” said Brett Wall, president of the neurovascular division, part of the Restorative Therapies Group at Medtronic. “Lazarus Effect’s ‘mesh cover’ technology complements our ischemic stroke portfolio and further enhances our Neurovascular business’s ability to deliver next generation technologies.”

The Lazarus Cover device is an innovative, differentiating technology that is complementary to Medtronic’s Solitaire stent retriever platform. This technology is designed to address clinical needs with a novel nitinol “mesh cover” that folds over a stent retriever device during clot retrieval and “candy wraps” the stent with the clot inside.

“Medtronic has been a significant supporter of the recent clinical work showing improved outcomes of ischemic stroke patients treated with endovascular therapy. Their support of data driven clinical evidence and the success with their SolitaireTM stent retriever device make them the clear market leader for treating ischemic stroke. Lazarus Effect is pleased to bring our innovative technologies together with Medtronic’s market leading therapies,” said Martin Dieck, co-founder, president and CEO, Lazarus Effect.

Recently, the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association published new stroke treatment guidelines that recommend the use of stent retriever technology such as Medtronic’s Solitaire stent retriever device in conjunction with the current standard of care. The AHA/ASA guidelines are based on a panel of experts’ analysis of the results from five global clinical trials published in The New England Journal of Medicine that found the addition of stent retriever technology, a surgical procedure that manually removes blood clots from the brain, to current medical therapy such as IV-tPA, has a therapeutic benefit over medical therapy alone. The primary stent retriever studied in the five global trials was the Solitaire stent retriever device.

Of the 695,000 acute ischemic stroke victims in the U.S., about 240,000 are eligible for treatment with a stent retriever like the Solitaire device. However, while these devices are available at more than 500 hospitals in the U.S., only about 13,000 procedures were performed in 2014.

The Lazarus Cover device is an adjunctive device used in stent retriever procedures and obtained CE Mark authorization in November 2014 for commercial distribution in the European Union; the U.S. regulatory approval process is pending.

The transaction is expected to meet Medtronic’s long-term financial metrics for acquisitions. Medtronic expects the net impact from this transaction to be earnings neutral in fiscal year 2016 as the company intends to offset any dilutive impact of the transaction. Medtronic will report the Lazarus Effect product line as part of its Neurovascular division within the Restorative Therapies Group.