Avinger announced this week it laid off 36 employees as part of a corporate restructuring.
The image-guided atherectomy developer will shift the company’s strategic focus from manufacturing and selling products that treat peripheral artery disease (PAD) to developing image-guided devices that allow physicians to penetrate a total blockage in an artery. Avinger’s board of directors approved the terminations “in an effort to preserve and more efficiently allocate resources,” according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Employees affected by the layoffs include all sales and manufacturing personnel related to Avinger’s PAD products. The terminations took effect on January 3. As a result, the company will no longer manufacture PAD products and anticipates it will no longer generate revenues from the sales of PAD devices.
Avinger plans to focus much of its operations on research and development of chronic total occlusion crossing devices for treating coronary artery disease.
“There can be no guarantee that we will be successful in developing such products or, if such products are developed, that we will be able to successfully commercialize such products,” the company said in the SEC filing.
The company does not believe that the change in strategic focus and layoffs will result in material changes.
