Dive Brief:

• CoreMap said Wednesday it has raised $37 million to fund development of its atrial fibrillation mapping platform. 
• Medtronic led the Series C financing round, giving CoreMap the resources to shorten the path to market for a product designed to improve the treatment of AFib.
• CoreMap designed its device to enable physicians to identify the cardiac sites that drive complex arrhythmias, revealing where they should deliver ablation to treat fibrillation.

Dive Insight:

AFib is a relatively common and difficult to treat cardiac arrhythmia that increases patients’ risk of stroke and death. Ablating tissue with radiofrequency or pulsed field energy can improve outcomes by destroying cells that drive the disease. However, the effectiveness of ablation depends on the physician’s ability to find and target the cardiac sites responsible for AFib.

Companies including Abbott, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic market cardiac mapping systems used to inform ablation. CoreMap has identified a need for better systems. Medtronic, which sells the Affera mapping and ablation system, has provided funding to help CoreMap bring its product to market. 

“CoreMap is addressing one of the critical unmet needs in [AFib] treatment with a differentiated technology platform and strong clinical support,” Chris Eso, global head of corporate and business development, M&A and ventures at Medtronic, said in a statement.

Investigators began enrolling patients in a clinical trial of CoreMap’s system in 2024. The Food and Drug Administration approved the extension of the study into the U.S. in 2025. CoreMap’s study design has three phases, the last of which will compare the safety and effectiveness of its system to a control arm. 

The study will assess the system’s ability to identify spatially constrained AFib drivers and guide ablation therapy. CoreMap received U.S. government funding in 2020 based on the potential for its technology to overcome the lack of spatial resolution that prevents existing devices from adequately resolving discrete, closely spaced activations.

CoreMap raised money to supplement the government support, disclosing a $10.5 million Series A round in 2020 and a $23 million Series B financing in 2022. Since those rounds, the electrophysiology market has been reshaped by PFA products. Boston Scientific and Medtronic were the first to market but now compete with Abbott and J&J.