Abbott Labs (ABT) yesterday announced three deals related to invasive treatment for the millions of people suffering from cardiac arrhythmia, an uncomfortable heart condition that can lead to strokes. One was a $250 million acquisition of Topera Inc. Another was an option to acquire Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics, while a third was to invest in VytronUS as part of a $31.5 million venture capital round.
Fortune has learned that each transaction was contingent on the other two, with all three having something else in common: Justin Klein, a partner with venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.
Cardiac arrhythmia occurs when the heart does not contract properly, thus sometimes causing blood to clot. A majority of treatments are pharmaceutical, but more and more doctors have been recommending a procedure in which a specially-trained cardiologist uses a catheter to burn specific patterns inside the heart, in order to remove the blocking tissues (and/or redirect blood). In around 40% of cases, the procedure has been successful. But that still means there is a huge unmet need in the majority of cases, and even the successful procedures only are being judged on a one-year post-procedure basis.
So, nearly seven years ago, Klein identified cardiac arrhythmia treatment as an area ripe for improvement. And investment. His first deal was a 2007 venture capital round for VytronUS, a Silicon Valley company that lets cardiologists “draw” the burn patterns on an image of a patient’s heart, and a robotic catheter to blast away the tissue. his second came in 2013, when NEA became the largest (and only institutional) investor in Topera Inc., which developed mapping software to help physicians identify which areas of a person’s heart is causing arrhythmia, for the purpose of catheter-based ablation.
Finally, NEA participated led an $8 million follow-on financing earlier this year for ACT, which creates temperature-sensitive technologies for improving the safety and effectiveness of ablation procedures. A source familiar with the deal says that NEA received around a 60% equity stake and that Abbott would pay between $175 million and $200 million for ACT, were it to exercise the purchase option.
Klein, who sits on the boards of all three companies, declined to discuss deal specifics that weren’t laid out in the Abbott press release. He did say, however, that he isn’t surprised Abbott took notice. “We prospectively identified this market as attractive, because the number of ablative procedures was growing in double digits,” he explains. “We wanted to find tools or solutions that made those procedures more effective, and believed that it would be a huge market opportunity for companies like Abbott or Boston Scientific (BSX) or Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).
An Abbott Labs spokesman declined to comment on deal specifics that the company had not previously disclosed.
Sign up for Dan’s daily newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com
