On the heels of securing another $40 million from its partner, Medtronic, Mazor Robotics has earned a CE mark for its surgical guidance system for spine procedures.
“Receipt of the CE Mark is an important step in our plan to expand the patient, surgeon and hospital benefits of the Mazor X Surgical Assurance Platform to the European market,” said Mazor CEO Ori Hadomi, in a statement. “Our commercial partner for the Mazor X, Medtronic, will be responsible for marketing and selling the system in Europe and we look forward to working with them to ensure a successful launch.”
The Caesarea, Israel-based company tied up with Medtronic in May last year, inking a pair of co-promotion and co-development deals. At the time, Mazor picked up $11.9 million in exchange for 4% of its shares. In August, the company picked up another $20 million in return for a 3% stake when it launched the FDA-cleared Mazor X platform.
RELATED: Medtronic invests in Mazor once again, just after Mazor X unveiling
In September, Mazor met some sales and marketing milestones, triggering the $40 million payment and Medtronic’s assumption of the global distribution rights for the Mazor X platform in the spine market.
Partnering with Mazor is just one part of Medtronic’s robotic surgery program. The device giant had long kept the details under wraps, but it released a tidbit last summer—it expected its surgical robot to generate “material revenue” in 2019.
Medtronic expects to launch a robot by the end of 2018, said Bryan Hanson, president of Medtronic’s Minimally Invasive Therapies Group, on the fourth-quarter 2017 earnings call in May.
“In robotic system our goal isn’t necessarily just to compete in robotics; this is a part of a much broader strategy for us. The fact is we’ve got a lot of open procedures today that we truly believe should be done minimally invasively,” Hanson said.