A Medical Device Daily

PerkinElmer (Waltham, Massachusetts) reported that it has completed its acquisition of ViaCell (Cambridge, Massachusetts), a biotechnology company specializing in the collection and preservation of umbilical cord blood stem cells.

Earlier this week PerkinElmer reported completing its tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of ViaCell’s common stock for $7.25 a share in cash. Based on ViaCell’s 38.8 million outstanding shares as of Aug. 7, the deal is worth about $281.6 million (Medical Device Daily, Nov. 12, 2007).

The deal was first disclosed last month (MDD, Oct. 15. 2007).

The company has said it is buying ViaCell to expand its product line in the neonatal and prenatal markets. ViaCell makes ViaCord, which preserves umbilical cord blood.

“PerkinElmer is committed to protecting the health of mothers and babies from pregnancy through birth and beyond,” said Robert Friel, president/COO of PerkinElmer. “The addition of ViaCell marks another step in our efforts to become a leading provider of innovative prenatal, neonatal and maternal healthcare solutions. We will continue to look for opportunities to build our product portfolio and provide the most comprehensive and accurate assessment of newborn and maternal health to families and their healthcare providers.”

PerkinElmer provides newborn screening systems, offering the only tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) kit cleared by FDA as an aid to screening for inborn errors of metabolism.

PerkinElmer offers Ultra-Screen a first-trimester prenatal screening protocol designed to provide patient-specific risk assessment for certain chromosomal abnormalities, through its clinical test subsidiary, NTD Laboratories.

In other dealmaking news:

• Select Medical (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania) reported that it and CORA Health Services have decided to terminate the agreement and plan of merger the companies entered into on Oct. 1. Select reported last month that it planned to acquire the business of CORA for about $46 million in cash. The deal was expected to close in 4Q07 (MDD, Oct. 5, 2007).

CORA, an outpatient medical rehabilitation company, operates 95 clinics in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with three additional clinics in Florida scheduled expected to open shortly. Select operates 85 long-term acute care hospitals and four acute medical rehabilitation hospitals in 25 states.

• UTEK (Tampa, Florida) and NeoStem (New York) reported that NeoStem has acquired Stem Cell Technologies (Louisville, Kentucky), a subsidiary of UTEK, in a stock for stock transaction.

Stem Cell Technologies owns a worldwide exclusive license to a technology developed by researchers at the University of Louisville to identify and isolate rare stem cells from adult human bone marrow, called very small embryonic-like (VSELs) stem cells. According to the company, VSELs have been shown to have several physical characteristics that are generally found in embryonic stem cells. They also have been shown to grow in the laboratory and multiply into clusters of cells that then can differentiate into specialized cells found in different types of tissue including cardiac, neural, endothelial, muscle, pancreatic and hematopoietic cells.

NeoStem also reported entering into a sponsored research agreement with the University of Louisville to support further research in one of the university’s laboratories, a portion of which will be covered by the acquisition.

NeoStem says it seeks to provide the infrastructure, methods and systems that allow adults to have their stem cells safely collected and conveniently banked for future therapeutic use, as needed, in the treatment of such life-threatening diseases as diabetes, heart disease and radiation sickness that may result from a bio-terrorist attack.