Company Founded by Student and Professor Goes Public

March 7, 2008

MAKO Surgical Corp., a medical device company that started out as a McCormick student's master's thesis, recently held its initial public offering.

MAKO grew out of Z-KAT, a minimally-invasive surgery company co-founded in the mid-90s by Michael Peshkin, professor of mechanical engineering, and graduate student Julio Santos.

Santos' master's thesis project involved using two quick fluoroscopic snapshots to allow for three-dimensional surgical planning. Santos then used a robot to guide the surgeon's tools according to the plan. The system was originally intended for spinal surgery.

Santos' work received a write-up in Popular Mechanics magazine, which was read by two biomedical engineers and an orthopedic surgeon in Florida. The group then flew up to meet with Santos and Peshkin, and the pair set up the robot to demonstrate. At the last minute, the potential business partners asked them to drill into a bone they had never tried before: the femur of the leg.

"Julio was sweating bullets," Peshkin laughs. "But it worked beautifully." Shortly thereafter the group formed Z-KAT to commercialize image-guided surgery.

"The company struggled and struggled and went through rounds and rounds of venture financing," Peshkin says. Z-KAT grew to 40 employees before it morphed into MAKO in 2004.

MAKO has since developed a system called MAKOplasty, which uses image-guided planning for placing prosthetic knees. The company held its initial public offering February 14 and now has a market capitalization of more than $180 million.

Though Peshkin's stock and his involvement in the company has shrunk throughout the company's evolution, he still fondly thinks of it as "the little company that could."

"It kept struggling, stayed in there, and now it's gone public," he says.