A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Natus Medical (San Carlos, California) reported that the underwriter of its recently disclosed public offering of 2.3 million shares of common stock exercised its over-allotment option to purchase an additional 345,000 shares of the company's common stock, bringing the total shares offered to 2.645 million.

The company said it received about $29 million in net proceeds from the offering, after payment of underwriting discounts and commissions and expenses of the offering.

The company said it intends to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include the financing of potential acquisitions of, or investments in, companies and technologies that complement the company's business, as well as for capital expenditures and working capital needs.

It also may use a portion of the proceeds to repay some or all of the remaining balance on its senior secured credit facility with Wells Fargo Bank.

Roth Capital Partners acted as underwriter of the offering.

Natus is a provider of products used for screening, detection, treatment, monitoring and tracking of common medical ailments such as hearing impairment, neurological dysfunction, epilepsy, sleep disorders, newborn jaundice and newborn metabolic testing.

In other financing activity

• Safeguard Scientifics (Wayne, Pennsylvania) led a $30 million Series C financing in Rubicor Medical (Redwood City, California), a company developing disposable, non-invasive, breast biopsy devices.

Safeguard provided $20 million of growth capital and ITX International Equity provided $5 million.

James Vetter, MD, Rubicor's CEO and chairman, and other founding shareholders are expected to provide the balance of the funding.

Rubicor's three devices offer alternatives to existing breast biopsy devices. Ovation, its lead product, empowers physicians to capture complete breast tissue abnormalities with a minimally invasive procedure. This results in a more accurate assessment of the sample including evaluation of margin and determination of size. Two additional breast biopsy devices are projected for launch in the near future, and all three have received FDA clearance.

"Ovation's innovative concept and design enables minimally invasive retrieval of a complete, contiguous tissue sample — making Ovation an attractive alternative to open surgical biopsy," said James Datin, executive vice president and managing director of life sciences at Safeguard. "We estimate the market in which Rubicor competes could be in excess of $500 million today in the U.S."

• Mirabilis Medica (Seattle) reported the closing of a $4 million Series A financing that it said it will use to complete development, testing and introduction of its image-guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) system for treatment of gynecological diseases.

The financing was co-led by Charter Life Sciences (Palo Alto, California) and vSpring Capital (Salt Lake City).

Mirabilis describes its mission as the development of non-invasive alternatives to invasive surgery. The company's technology combines the application of therapeutic ultrasound HIFU under the guidance of conventional diagnostic ultrasound imaging. The technology is designed to allow the physician to target and destroy pathological tissue deep within the body without cutting, puncturing or damaging normal tissue, and while carefully monitoring effects with real-time imaging.

It says that this ability to simultaneously see and non-invasively treat could facilitate office-based therapy for a wide variety of conditions. But it says its initial focus is uterine fibroids.

It cites figures from the Department of Health and Human Services that 75% of women develop such tumors prior to menopause, although many remain asymptomatic or undiagnosed. Currently about 30% of women aged 25 to 45 have been diagnosed with fibroids, leading 7% of women in this age group to eventually seek hysterectomy.

Michael Lau, MD, company CEO, said that the company's technology "is designed to allow fibroid sufferers to be treated by their own physician in the office in about 30 minutes, and resume normal activities in just a few days."

Nelson Teng, MD, PhD, managing director of Charter Life Sciences, said that Mirabilis "is applying truly innovative technology to offer the first effective non-invasive treatment for fibroids."

Mirabilis was founded in 2004 by Michael Lau, MD, Alexander Lebedev and Shahram Vaezy, PhD. Vaezy was the lead inventor of the company's patented technology, which was initially developed at University of Washington and exclusively licensed to Mirabilis.

• BioMed Realty Trust (San Diego) reported that it has closed a $147 million loan secured by the company's Shady Grove Road property in Rockville, Maryland. The loan bears interest at 5.97% and will mature on Sept. 1, 2016. BioMed used the proceeds of this new mortgage loan, along with borrowings on its unsecured revolving credit facility, to repay the company's $150 million bridge loan, which was secured by the same property.

The company also reported it has closed on the previously disclosed acquisitions of three properties, totaling 224,358 rentable square feet of laboratory and office space, for an aggregate purchase price of about $53.3 million. The properties include a 76,389-square-foot property in Malvern, Pennsylvania, for about $9.4 million; the Array BioPharma (Longmont, Colorado) life science campus for about $20.8 million; and a 69,946-square-foot, two-story office and laboratory facility located in San Diego for about $23.1 million.