A Medical Device Daily

Tornier (Eden Prairie, Minnesota) said it has agreed to purchase Nexa Orthopedics (San Diego), a private company manufacturing orthopedic and podiatric devices, by acquiring 100% of Nexa's fully diluted equity. Other deal terms were not disclosed.

Tornier said it anticipates deal closing this quarter.

Tornier said the purchase represents key expansion of its portfolio for surgeons performing procedures on the extremities (shoulder, arm, hand, foot and ankle) and expand its technology with new implantable device materials and coatings.

Paul Nichols, president/CEO of Nexa, said, "Tornier's strong global franchise in total joint arthroplasty and most recently, ankle arthroplasty in the United States, is an ideal platform from which to maximize the potential of the proprietary technology and products developed by Nexa in recent years."

Tornier's extremity products include the Aequalis cemented, press fit, and reversed shoulder arthroplasty prostheses, a proximal humeral fracture treatment system, a shoulder resurfacing head as well as elbow, ankle, and radial head prostheses.

Nexa, founded in 2004 by HealthpointCapital, markets the NexFix internal fixation system for foot and ankle surgery, the Osteocure line of biologic products, the BioProfile range of pyrocarbon implants for the upper extremity and the Futura podiatric surgery product line.

In other dealmaking activity:

• Thermo Fisher Scientific (TSF; Waltham, Massachusetts) has requested Federal Trade Commission approval to sell of one of its divisions to two private equity firms.

TSF makes scientific instruments and laboratory supplies and was formed by Thermo Electron's $10.6 billion acquisition of Fisher Scientific International last year (Medical Device Daily, Nov. 10, 2006). The FTC said in October, when it approved the transaction, that Thermo Electron and Fisher were the only two significant suppliers in the $10 million centrifugal vacuum evaporators (CVE) market and that the company had to sell the CVE division to an FTC-approved buyer. High-performance CVEs — used by pharmaceutical research labs — use heat, a vacuum and centrifugal force to process large collections of molecules.

TSF has requested the approval to sell the CVE assets to Riverlake Partners and MVC Capital. The FTC is accepting comments on the proposal until March 11.

Best Lab Deals (BLD; Garner, North Carolina) reported that it has received more than $6 million in Thermo Fisher overstock, demo and scratch-and-dent inventory. Items included in the inventory are IEC centrifuges, Powerfreeze freezers, standard refrigerators and freezers, Hamilton furniture case work and fume hoods and safety cabinets.

BLD distributes lab equipment and supplies, including clean room and safety products.

• NightHawk Radiology Holdings (Coeur d'Alene, Idaho), a provider of radiology services and workflow solutions to its customers in the U.S., reported purchasing Teleradiology Diagnostic Service (TDS; Arcadia, California), a provider of off-hours teleradiology services to hospitals throughout California. NightHawk paid an undisclosed amount of cash for TDS and said that it expects the transaction to be accretive to EPS in 2007.

"Together with TDS, we believe that we are now the largest provider of off-hours teleradiology services in that state," said Dr. Paul Berger, CEO and chairman of NightHawk.

TDS will operate as a subsidiary of NightHawk, and Dr. Wilson Wong, president/CEO of TDS, will lead TDS operations.

• Enova Medical Technologies (St. Paul, Minnesota), a provider of product development, manufacturing and commercialization services for medical device companies, said it has merged with MedTreo (also St. Paul) and added the company's medical products to expand its existing line.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

MedTreo is an early-stage company that designs Class I and Class II products used in emergency, hospital, clinical and sports medicine settings.

• Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis) reported acquiring all of the outstanding shares of Epichem Group (Bromborough, UK) for $60 million in cash to expand its SAFC Hitech business offering.

Sigma-Aldrich said that the acquisition of Epichem's $40 million in annual revenue is expected to help it achieve growth goals in high-tech markets and will be neutral to mildly accretive to earnings in 2007.

Barry Leese, managing director of Epichem, a majority equity holder and a company founder, was named president of the new business segment, named SASFC Hitech. SAFC is a group within Sigma-Aldrich that focuses on high-purity inorganics for high technology applications, cell culture products and services for biopharma manufacturing, biochemical production and the manufacturing of multi-step organic synthesis of APIs and key intermediates.

Epichem management and employees will remain in place.