Los Angeles Business Journal Staff
By DEBORAH CROWE - 7/30/2007
Vantage Expands
Vantage Oncology Inc. has completed a $22.5 million equity financing that will enable it to expand its chain of high-tech radiation oncology centers around the country.
The El Segundo-based private company, which now operates 22 centers in ten states, has already begun putting the money to work. It recently opened two centers locally and signed six new partnerships to open eight cancer centers in four new out-of-state markets.
The two new centers are located in Sherman Oaks and West Hills, both of which involve partnerships with Bernard Lewinsky, Robert Zimmerman, Marc Botnick and other physicians at the Valley Radiotherapy Associates Medical Group.
Vantage’s business model seeks to make the latest radiation therapies available, often in markets that might not normally get access so soon, by leveraging investor money to pay for the multi-million dollar equipment. It also engages hospitals and entrepreneurial local physicians to have an ownership stake.
“With the major changes in technology that were taking place when we were founded, our model made sense from a clinical, technology, financial and management perspective,” said Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiore.
It typically costs $5 million to get each center up and running, most of which goes toward equipment capable of more sophisticated cancer treatment approaches, such as intensity modulated radiation therapy, which enables oncologists to target high-dose radiation at a tumor with less risk to surrounding healthy tissue.
The equity financing, Vantage’s fourth round since its founding in 2002, included one new investor, Camden Partners, and additional funds from four existing investors. Investors so far have put $75 million into Vantage, which Fiore expects may be ready to go public in the next few years.
Staff Reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232, or at dcrowe@labusinessjournal.com
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