Medical Imaging Company Guerbet Buys Microcatheter Startup Accurate Medical

Villepinte, France-based medical imaging company Guerbet is acquiring Tel Aviv-based startup Accurate Medical Therapeutics Ltd., the companies announced Monday. Guerbet will make an initial payment of €19.5 million and additional payments spread over several years depending on the achievement of regulatory and commercial objectives for the Israeli company. The final sum of the acquisition will not exceed €57 million in total.

For daily updates, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here .

Established in 2015, Accurate Medical develops microcatheters—small-diameter catheters used for procedures performed in the smaller vessels. The company focuses on the interventional radiology field, which requires such catheters for minimally invasive procedures including image-guided diagnosis, and targeted delivery of drugs. The company's anti-reflux technology prevents drugs delivered from going against the catheter's direction and spreading in two directions, enabling better-targeted delivery.

Anti-reflux microcatheter (illustration). Photo: Accurate Medical Therapeutics Ltd.

The acquisition “will fuel Guerbet's growth in interventional radiology and will round out its current portfolio," said Guerbet CEO Yves L'Epine in a statement. "This new range of microcatheters will allow us to help interventional radiology teams deliver a higher quality of care during image-guided embolization procedures."

"We are confident that Guerbet has significant assets and resources that will enable our range of microcatheters to become a market leader, in particular, the microcatheters possessing the unique anti-reflux technology," said Michael Tal, co-developer, and co-founder of Accurate Medical.

The transaction is expected to start generating sales by the end of this year and be accretive from the fourth quarter of 2019, the companies said in a statement. Accurate Medical will remain based in Israel. CEO Eran Miller will continue to lead the company.