Calypso Medical Technologies, a medical device and software company which has developed a tracking system to pinpoint tumors in the body, has been acquired for $10 million by Varian Medical Systems of Palo Alto, California.
Timothy E. Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems said, “With Calypso’s technology, Varian will be able to offer cancer treatment centers real-time, non-ionizing tumor tracking tools for enhancing the precision of their treatments.”
Calypso, based in Seattle, creates products and software used to do real-time tracking of tumors during cancer treatment. The company does much of its work in prostate cancer treatment and is developing a lung cancer treatment product.
The Calypso® System features GPS for the Body® technology and Beacon® electromagnetic transponders that together currently provide a solution to continuously and accurately track and target location to improve precision of prostate cancer treatments. The transponders are implanted into the prostate or prostatic bed and then tracked with the 4D localization and tracking system so that beams can be precisely delivered to targeted tumors during radiotherapy and radiosurgery with medical linear accelerators such as Varian’s TrueBeam platform.
Varian, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said the acquisition will complement to its motion management technology. The purchase price could increase based on sales of Calypso products over the next 2 1/2 years. The deal is expected to close in early October.
Calypso said it generates more than $15 million in annual revenue from sales and service of its products, with the systems in place at more than 100 institutions in North America and Europe. It also has a patent portfolio of some 90 patents. It has more than 110 of its tracking systems installed in North America and Europe.
Although the deal is not a great success for investors who put $50 million into the company in 2009.