A Medical Device Daily
Henry Schein (Melville, New York), a provider of healthcare products and services to office-based practitioners, reported that it has acquired Minerva Dental (Cardiff, UK), a supplier of dental consumables and equipment in the UK. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Henry Schein said it expects the acquisition of Minerva, which recorded revenue of about $40 million in 2007, to be neutral to 2008 diluted EPS and slightly accretive to 2009 earnings.
"The acquisition of Minerva strengthens [our] full-service dental business in the UK, particularly in the South and Southwest regions," said Stanley Bergman, chairman/CEO of Henry Schein.
Minerva was founded in 1919 and has operations in five locations throughout the UK.
NeuroLogica (Danvers, Massachusetts) reported that it will acquire all technology and assets for Xenon CT (XeCT) Perfusion from Diversified Diagnostic Products (DDP; Houston). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The company said it believes the combination of portable CT and XeCT will now allow faster, more accurate and quantifiable information on cerebral blood flow in patients with a variety of neurological emergencies such as stroke and traumatic brain injury.
The company believes the XeCT technology is an important addition to NeuroLogica's Portable CT functionality and enhances its Portable CT capabilities in the emergency room, intensive care unit and operating room.
"The Xenon CT Perfusion product is a great clinical fit for NeuroLogica. The CereTom portable CT combined with the XeCT package is an extremely valuable diagnostic tool in monitoring patients with traumatic brain injury. The ability to acquire quantitative Xenon studies in the ICU at the bedside is changing the way we assess cerebral blood flow in these critically ill patients," said Colin McDonald, MD, medical director for NeuroLogica.
In other dealmaking news:
• 4th Floor Investment Group (Naperville, Illinois), a privately held holding company of diverse lower-middle market companies and investments, reported that it has divested its interest investment in NanoBlade (Little Rock, Arkansas) a company involved in pathology evaluation while concurrently enhancing cancer research.
The remaining shareholders in Nanoblade will continue to seek venture capital funding to grow the firm, said Thomas Geza Varga, CEO of 4th Floor.
Nanoblade is developing fresh tissue sectioning and collection devices, rapid intraoperative evaluation tools and advanced imaging technologies offering 3-D reconstruction with cellular resolution.
• Microchip Biotechnologies (MB; Dublin, California) reported that it has entered into a multi-patent license agreement with GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) that it said "significantly enhances" its intellectual property portfolio supporting the development of lab-on-a-chip devices.
The patents cover design and methods for creating integrated fluidic microchip devices.
MB said it will use the technology licensed from GE to develop Sample-To-Answer systems using advanced microfluidic technologies. Microfluidics deals with the behavior, precise control, and manipulation of microliter and nanoliter volumes of fluids to perform life science assays.
Microfluidics technologies are used for development of lab-on-a-chip devices for DNA analysis and molecular diagnostics.