The UC Berkeley spinout has been snapped up by Astellas, two years after the latter took part in its series A round.
Iota Biosciences, a US-based bioelectronic medicine developer based on University of California (UC), Berkeley technology, has agreed to an acquisition by pharmaceutical firm Astellas, one of its existing shareholders.
Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Iota is working on ‘neural dust’ technology developed at UC Berkeley with a view to its use in millimetre-scale implantable medical devices. Astellas intends to invest $125m in the technology in the next five years.
The corporate joined investment firm Shanda, Horizons Ventures, Bold Capital Partners and Ironfire Ventures in Iota’s $15m series A round in mid-2018 before signing a research and development agreement with the company in August 2019.
Kenji Yasukawa, president and chief executive of Astellas, said: “I believe that Iota’s technology is a promising core technology that can be applied not only to the current programmes we are working on, but to broader types…
