Originally Published MX September/October
2002

BUSINESS NEWS

Guidant Eludes
Licensing Dispute through Cook Purchase

Guidant president and CEO Ron Dollens.

Paying $3 billion
for the license to use a single drug compound may seem a bit extravagant—but
maybe not when leadership in the hotly contested emerging market for drug-eluting
stents is at stake.

In July, Guidant
Corp. (Indianapolis) announced that it would purchase Cook Group Inc. (Bloomington,
IN) in a stock-for-stock transaction of up to 65.79 million Guidant shares worth
a maximum of $3 billion. The transaction will give Guidant ownership of all
of the Cook Group businesses, with specialties in interventional radiology,
interventional cardiology, urology, neuroradiology, vascular medicine, and critical
care.

More important,
the purchase brings with it Cook's part of a coexclusive license to use
paclitaxel as a coating for coronary stents. In preclinical and clinical studies
at cytostatic doses, paclitaxel has demonstrated promising results for reducing
the processes leading to restenosis.

So important is
the paclitaxel license that Guidant made it the subject of a special set of