University of Iowa startup gets equity investment

IOWA CITY - A University of Iowa startup business has attracted an equity investment from Boston Scientific Corp., a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices.

IOWA Approach has developed a patent-pending atrial fibrillation ablation technology. Atrial fibrillation is a serious cardiac disorder and leading cause of stroke that affects more than 2.5 million Americans, with an additional 200,000 patients diagnosed annually as the nation's population ages.

The funding from Boston Scientific will be used to advance product engineering and for additional preclinical activities for IOWA Approach's technology. Neither the university nor Boston Scientific would disclose the dollar value of the investment.

Drug therapies work in a minority of patients with atrial fibrillation, but often only serve to mask the underlying problem. Treating the disorder with ablation has become an accepted medical therapy and approximately 400,000 procedures are conducted each year.

Existing ablation treatment options are complex, lengthy and costly. Allan Zingeler, president and CEO of IOWA Approach, said the company's system may have the potential to overcome the shortcomings of existing techniques.

'Our ablation method requires no expensive 3D mapping, no sophisticated imaging, no intracardiac echo and no transseptal puncture,” Zingeler said. 'The time to make the entire continuous and transmural lesion isolating all of the pulmonary veins takes less than a minute.”

The investment by Boston Scientific comes as IOWA Approach is preparing for its first human cases in 2016. IOWA Approach recently signed an exclusive global license agreement with the University of Iowa Research Foundation for its ablation technology.