Pittsburgh’s Cardiorobotics raises $5M for ‘snake robot’

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — Cardiorobotics Inc., which is developing a “snake robot” to treat cardiovascular disease, raised another $5 million from a group of unnamed investors.

The Pittsburgh-based company, which has a business and product development facility in Newport, R.I., is developing what it calls the cardioARM device, a robotic method to treat heart arrhythmia using a single-port, epicardial procedure.

The latest round will net about $4.8 million for Cardiorobotics, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company closed an $11.6 million Series A financing round in August, 2009, aimed at funding clinical trials and commercializing the “snake robot” device.

The standard of care for cardiac arrhythmia typically involves open-heart surgery and a heart-lung machine, which performs the work of those organs while surgeons work on the heart.

Cardiorobotics claims its device will transform that lengthy, complex procedure into one involving only a small incision, no heart-lung machine and about an hour’s time.