Milestones 4053

Originally Published MX July/August 2006

MILESTONES

Rehabilitation and regeneration product manufacturer dj Orthopedics Inc. (San Diego) has completed its $290 million acquisition of Aircast Inc. "While we are known as a leader in knee bracing and Aircast is known as a leader in ankle bracing, the acquisition also complements and strengthens our existing franchises in fracture boots and in cold therapy products," said Les Cross, president and chief executive officer of dj Orthopedics. "We are also very excited about our new sales opportunities with Aircast's VenaFlow vascular system for the hospital-based prevention of deep vein thrombosis after surgery."

Home Diagnostics Inc. (Fort Lauderdale, FL) has registered for an initial public offering of up to $115 million in common stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which manufactures a full line of diabetes-monitoring products, posted net income of $5.9 million for 2005, compared with $2 million in 2004 and $7.9 million in 2003.

Gambro AB (Stockholm) has announced its intent to acquire Hemapure AB (Uppsala, Sweden), which manufactures the Hemaport vascular access device. The acquisition, in which all Hemapure employees will transfer to Gambro, will reportedly broaden Gambro's portfolio of vascular access solutions and provide new growth opportunities. "The acquisition of this new technology shows Gambro's focus and commitment in the area of vascular access—to provide the best solution for each patient category," said Jon Risfelt, president of Gambro Renal Products.

Ethicon Inc. (Somerville, NJ), a Johnson & Johnson company, has acquired Vascular Control Systems Inc. (San Juan Capistrano, CA), a privately held company that is developing devices to treat fibroids and to control bleeding in obstetric and gynecologic applications.

BioHelix Corp. (Beverly, MA) has entered an exclusive licensing agreement with Harvard University for the rights to commercialize a novel whole-genome amplification (WGA) technology developed at the university. "Nucleic acid testing in molecular diagnostics is a rapidly growing field," said Huimin Kong, PhD, president and CEO of BioHelix. "BioHelix is developing a rich portfolio of technology platforms for nucleic acid analysis and molecular diagnostics, and Harvard's primase-based WGA technology fits very well into our product development pipeline."

SonoSite Inc. (Bothell, WA) and Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, PA), the medical unit of Siemens AG (Erlangen, Germany), have signed an agreement under which Siemens will market and distribute SonoSite's MicroMaxx and Titan systems in Germany's general imaging and point-of-care hospital markets. "We believe that working together will create and expand opportunities for both companies as well as accelerate the adoption of hand-carried ultrasound in this strategically important market," said Dieter Schwartmann, SonoSite vice president for Europe.

Pharmaceutical developer Pharmacyclics Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) has acquired multiple small-molecule drug candidates for the treatment of cancer and other diseases from Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD), a business of Applera Corp. The transaction included a $2 million up-front payment to Celera and an agreement for potential future milestone payments to Celera of up to $144 million, as well as potential royalty payments. "This transaction enables us to realize immediate and potential long-term value as these programs continue to progress, while allowing us to focus our resources on our core business of molecular diagnostics and proteomics and genomics discovery," said Kathy Ordoñez, president of Celera Genomics.

Copyright ©2006 MX