A Medical Device Daily

Angiotech Pharmaceuticals (Vancouver, British Columbia) and Symphony Medical (Laguna Hills, California) reported that they have entered into an exclusive licensing agreement to employ one of Angiotech’s PEG-based biomaterials as part of a prophylactic therapy envisioned to mitigate the onset of post-operative atrial fibrillation (POAF) for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting and cardiac valve surgeries.

“This agreement is another example of our continuing effort to lessen the complications and improve the outcomes of patients living with cardiovascular disease,” said Bill Hunter, president/CEO of Angiotech. “Our use of site-specific therapy has been central to the development of coronary and peripheral drug-eluting stents, anti-restenosis therapy in bypass surgery and hemodialysis access procedures, and more recently, coronary stem cell therapy and treatments for arrhythmias following open heart surgery,” he said.

Symphony has been developing non-destructive biocompatible polymer therapies to treat significant cardiac conditions such as atrial fibrillation and congestive heart failure since 2003. Its lead program involves the development of a prophylactic injection of biopolymer to prevent or reduce the incidence of POAF that occur following coronary artery bypass grafting and cardiac valve surgeries.

Angiotech has been granted an equity position in Symphony in exchange for the exclusive license of Angiotech’s technology in the field of POAF. Angiotech also will receive a royalty on end-user product sales should the product receive regulatory approval and is commercialized.

In other dealmaking news:

• Bruker BioSciences (Billerica, Massachusetts) said it has filed a proxy statement with the SEC regarding the previously reported, planned $914 million acquisition of the Bruker BioSpin group of companies that was reported on last month (Medical Device Daily, Dec. 4, 2007).

A special meeting of Bruker BioSciences stockholders to consider and vote upon matters relating to the proposed acquisition will be held on Feb. 25. Bruker BioSciences stockholders of record as of the close of business on Jan. 11 will be entitled to vote at the special meeting.

The waiting period imposed by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, for the proposed acquisition expired on Jan. 14.

• 20/20 GeneSystems (Rockville, Maryland), a developer of diagnostics for early disease detection and personalized medicine, said it has entered into an agreement with Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics (OCD, Raritan, New Jersey) to license certain 20/20 intellectual property relating to a blood test for the early detection of lung cancer.

The agreement provides 20/20 with up-front fees, development funding, milestone payments, and royalties on product sales by OCD. This agreement also follows a funding award jointly from the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Office of Science and Technology (New Brunswick, New Jersey) and the Maryland Technology Development Corp. (Columbia) relating to this blood test.

20/20 and its collaborators from the University of Kentucky (Lexington) have published study results that showed that its multi-biomarker blood test may be able to detect non-small cell lung cancer significantly earlier and with better accuracy than CT scans.

• AdvancedMD Software (Salt Lake City) reported it has been acquired by Francisco Partners (San Francisco), a technology-focused private equity firm. AdvancedMD develops web-based practice management and medical billing software.