Bionik Laboratories Closes Acquisition of Interactive Motion Technologies

Bionik Laboratories Corp., a global robotics company focused on providing rehabilitation solutions to individuals with neurological disorders, has closed the acquisition of Interactive Motion Technologies Inc. (IMT), a Boston, Mass.-based provider of robotic tools for neurorehabilitation.

Effective immediately, Jules Fried, IMT’s CEO, has been appointed to Bionik’s management team as vice president of U.S. operations and Hermano I. Krebs, Ph.D., M.S., IMT’s co-founder and board chairman, has been appointed chief science officer of the company. Dr. Neville Hogan, Sun Jae professor of mechanical engineering and professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a member of IMT’s board of directors, has assumed an advisory role to the Bionik team. Krebs and Hogan are the co-founders of IMT, researchers at MIT and world leaders in robot-aided rehabilitation. Bionik will maintain IMT’s U.S. office based in Boston. 

“The closing of this transaction marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Bionik and is a testament to our commitment to the execution of our growth strategy. We have effectively transformed Bionik by expanding the company’s technology and product portfolio significantly, ranging from commercial-stage products to products in development in the neurorehabilitation field,” said Peter Bloch, CEO and board chairman of Bionik Laboratories.

In return for acquiring the business and all the assets of IMT, Bionik has agreed to assume all of IMT’s liabilities and, under the terms of the merger agreement, IMT shareholders will receive up to an aggregate of 23,650,000 shares of Bionik’s common stock. Letters of transmittal allowing IMT stockholders of record to deliver their shares to Bionik in exchange for payment of the merger consideration will be distributed shortly after closing.

“Moving forward, our immediate priorities are to ensure a smooth integration of IMT and Bionik and put forth a robust effort towards our commercialization activities supporting market expansion and revenue generation as well as the advancement and development of our earlier-stage products and technologies towards approval in key markets globally,” Bloch said.

Through the closing of this transaction, Bionik’s product line now includes three upper extremity clinical rehabilitation products currently on the market for clinical use, a lower-body product available for research use being developed for clinical release, as well as a potential pipeline to other new product candidates based on recent research being done at MIT by Krebs and Hogan. The clinical products have been characterized as Class II medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are currently sold in more than 20 countries, including the United States.

Bionik expects to bolster its team with the appointment of a chief commercial officer, for which it is currently recruiting.

Through the acquisition of Interactive Motion Technologies, Toronto, Ontario-based Bionik has added a portfolio of products focused on upper and lower extremity rehabilitation of stroke patients. The company now has three products on the market and three products in varying stages of development. The InMotion Systems – the InMotion ARM, InMotion Wrist, InMotion Hand and InMotion Ankle, are designed to provide intelligent, patient-adaptive therapy in a manner that has been clinically verified to maximize neuro-recovery. Bionik is also developing a lower-body exoskeleton, ARKE, designed to allow paraplegics as well as other wheelchair users the ability to rehabilitate through walking. Each of Bionik’s products are or are expected to be designed to continually adapt to a patient’s ability and provide real time feedback to the physiotherapist through the use of Bionik’s proprietary data collection and analytics cloud network through its partnership with IBM.