A Medical Device Daily

Sequenom (San Diego) reported the pricing of its previously disclosed public offering of 5.5 million shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $15.50 a share (Medical Device Daily, June 24, 2008).

All of the shares are being offered by the company. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 825,000 shares of common stock.

Sequenom said it expects the net proceeds from the offering to be used for the development of diagnostic tests for use on its MassArray system and other platforms, and for general corporate purposes.

Lehman Brothers and UBS Investment Bank are joint book-running managers in this offering. The co-managers are Leerink Swann & Co., Lazard Capital Markets, Oppenheimer & Co. and Rodman & Renshaw.

Luminex (Austin, Texas) said it has priced its underwritten public offering of 3.5 million shares of its common stock. The company has granted the underwriters a 30-day over-allotment option to buy up to an additional 525,000 shares of common stock. The offering is expected to close June 30.

The offering price to the public is $19.91 a share. Luminex estimates that the net proceeds from the offering will be about $64.5 million, after deducting estimated expenses and underwriting discounts and commissions. Luminex said it intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including R&D, potential acquisitions and capital expenditures.

J.P. Morgan Securities and UBS Investment Bank are joint book-running managers for the offering; Avondale Partners, Canaccord Adams and Leerink Swann are co-managers.

Luminex makes biological testing technologies with applications throughout the life sciences industry. Its xMAP system is an open-architecture, multi-analyte technology platform designed to deliver fast, accurate and cost-effective bioassay results to several markets, including clinical diagnostics.

In other financing news:

• HealthSouth (Birmingham, Alabama) said it has agreed to sell 8.8 million shares of its common stock to J.P. Morgan Securities. The company said it would use the net proceeds for redemption and repayment of short-term or long-term borrowings and for general corporate purposes, including acquisitions of or investments in businesses or assets, capital expenditures, and working capital.

HealthSouth provides inpatient rehabilitation services.

• Signature Genomic Laboratories (Spokane, Washington) reported that jVen Capital, a life sciences investment company with a focus in the areas of biotechnology, diagnostics and devices, has acquired an equity interest in the company. In conjunction with the investment, Evan Jones, the principal of jVen Capital, has been appointed chairman of Signature's board.

Signature, founded in 2003, says it was the first laboratory to provide microarray-based cytogenetic diagnostics with its SignatureChip.