Abbott Labs to buy Menlo Park's Topera for $250M

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Signage for Abbott Laboratories stands at the company's headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois.

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Abbott Laboratories has agreed to buy Topera Inc., a Menlo Park-based medical device company for $250 million up front, with further payments based on certain performance factors.

Abbott (NYSE: ABT) said it sees the Topera acquisition as a way to get into the "catheter-based electrophysiology market, an approximately $3 billion global market that has been growing annually at double digits." Specifically, in the release, Abbott cited Topera's atrial fibrillation software as a key motivator for the deal.

Topera raised more than $31 million since it was founded in 2010, with New Enterprise Associates as the primary investor.

Michael Pederson, previously of VytronUS, another medical device company backed by NEA, will come on board to lead the new business for Abbott.

In its report, the Chicago Tribune placed this move among several Abbott CEO Miles White has made to change the face of the company recently, starting with the spinoff of AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) in 2013 and extending into other deals to buy pharmaceutical companies around the world this year and next.

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