Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Illinois) entered into an asset purchase agreement for the coronary and peripheral interventional business line of the Jomed Group, a provider of minimally invasive vascular interventional devices, for EUR 60 million. The intravascular ultrasound technology, functional measurement, cardiac surgery businesses and associated companies of the parent company, Jomed NV (Beringen, Switzerland), and its subsidiaries are not a part of the transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, wholly owned subsidiaries of Abbott will purchase the assets and assume certain operating liabilities of the coronary and peripheral interventional business from Jomed NV and its subsidiaries in a cash purchase. The agreement covers products, intellectual property, equipment, facilities and employees associated with the business line. In May 2002, Abbott acquired Biocompatibles International's (Farnham, UK) cardiovascular stent business in a cash deal valued at about $243 million. Jomed NV said earlier this year that it would sell some or all of its assets to pay debts. It raised $20 million in February by selling a catheter-based technology for repairing mitral heart valves without surgery to Edwards Lifesciences (Irvine, California) Abbott will gain access to Jomed's line of interventional cardiology and peripheral devices, which include stents, stent grafts, balloon devices and guiding and diagnostic catheters. Those products are used in the treatment of arterial obstructions in the coronary arteries, lower extremities, kidneys and carotid arteries. Abbott currently markets complementary products in the vessel closure, coronary stent and embolic protection segments.

Alliance Pharmaceutical (San Diego, California) completed two previously announced deals, spinning off its medical imaging assets to Photogen Technologies (New Hope, Pennsylvania) and acquiring the other half of a joint venture it had developed with Baxter Healthcare (Deerfield, Illinois) for the marketing rights to Oxygent. In the spin-off transaction, Photogen acquired all of Alliance's assets related to medical imaging, including all manufacturing and marketing rights to Imagent (perflexane lipid microspheres, formerly named Imavist), Alliance's ultrasound contrast agent that was approved by the FDA for marketing in the U.S. in June 2002. Imagent is used in echocardiography, the most widely used imaging modality to diagnose heart disease. Duane Roth, chairman and chief executive officer of Alliance, said that the transaction will allow Alliance to pay off outstanding debt "and allow us to seek new funding for our remaining technologies." Additionally, he said that Imagent "will be given its best opportunity to achieve success in the marketplace under Photogen, as they will be in position to properly launch the product with the experienced team of professionals that Alliance assembled in San Diego." Imagent will be marketed through the Imcor Pharmaceutical division of Photogen. Imagent is manufactured from synthetic materials, packaged as a dry powder and reconstituted with water to form an osmotically stabilized suspension of microspheres containing a perfluorochemical vapor and physiologic gases. It is injected intravenously into a patient undergoing a cardiac ultrasound exam. Imagent is cleared in the U.S. for use in patients with suboptimal echocardiograms to opacify the left ventricle and improve visualization of the main pumping chamber of the heart. Photogen is developing programs that make use of an iodinated nanoparticulate formulation that shows promise as a subcutaneous, intravenous or intra-arterial agent for both cardiovascular imaging and lymphography (the diagnosis of cancer metastasizing to lymph nodes). In Alliance's second deal, it completed the purchase of Baxter's ownership interest in PFC Therapeutics, the joint venture established by Alliance and Baxter in May 2000 to commercialize Oxygent in North America and Europe. Alliance has been developing therapeutic and diagnostic products based on its perfluorochemical and surfactant technologies and will now focus primarily on the development of Oxygent, an intravascular oxygen carrier composed of a sterile perfluorochemical emulsion that is compatible with all blood types. Alliance will pay to Baxter a royalty on the sales of Oxygent by PFC Therapeutics, its licensees or its assignees following the product's regulatory approval.

BTG (London), a global technology commercialization company, said it has acquired an exclusive license to an imaging probe designed to identify plaque lesions associated with atherosclerosis. The contract was signed during last month's BIO 2003 annual conference in Washington. The probe, created by a team of scientists led by Dr. Hu Liu at the Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John's, Newfoundland), involves the use of a chemical compound encapsulated into an acetylated low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Upon injection into the bloodstream, the probe travels to the site of atherosclerotic plaque and provides lesion-specific delivery of the diagnostic agent. The plaque can then be detected by g-scintigraphic imaging (gamma camera) or CT scanning. This new technology has the potential to not only identify the presence of atherosclerotic lesions, but also their location and stage of progression. Such information will be useful in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with such disease. BTG said it plans to commercialize the technology through an out-licensing program and is currently seeking to partner with companies capable of developing and marketing medical imaging agents.