A Medical Device Daily

MonoSolRx (Warren, New Jersey) reported that it closed a substantial preferred equity funding. The investment was oversubscribed and generated net cash proceeds to the company in excess of $38 million.

“This funding has strengthened our balance sheet. It will allow us to fund our continuing product development activities, make capital expenditures for additional manufacturing capabilities and provides for working capital to aggressively execute on our business plan,” said Mark Schobel, the company’s president/CEO.

MonoSolRx is a drug delivery company that uses film as a fast-dissolve oral drug delivery platform. Its film oral dosage form looks like a postage stamp and dissolves readily on the tongue to deliver drugs to a patient, replacing the use of conventional tablets and capsules. The company said it currently markets a variety of products together with its marketing partners.

Schobel said that the primary strategic objective of the company is to deliver “high value prescription and OTC drug targets” using its thin film drug delivery technology and that it plans to “aggressively pursue” global regulatory submissions alone or in conjunction with a pharmaceutical partner having strong sales and marketing expertise.

MonoSolRx said it has elected to use $20 million in proceeds from the offering to pay off existing indebtedness, and the company noted that it is now debt free.

The company was formed in 2004 when MonoSol , which developed water-soluble films, acquired substantially all of the assets of Kosmos Pharma (Great Falls, Virginia), including its extensive oral film intellectual property portfolio (Medical Device Daily, Jan. 27, 2004).

In other financing activity:

Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) reported that the initial purchasers of its 2.5% convertible senior notes due 2036 have exercised in full their over-allotment option to purchase an additional $75 million aggregate principal amount of notes. Including the sale of the additional notes — scheduled to close tomorrow — the aggregate principal amount of notes sold by Beckman Coulter in the offering will be $600 million.

The company estimated that the net proceeds from this offering will be about $586 million after deducting discounts, commissions and estimated expenses associated with the offering.

The company said it would use about $100 million of the net proceeds to repurchase shares of its common stock; about $245 million to consummate the tender offer for any and all of its outstanding 7.45% senior notes due 2008; and about $185 million to repay the bridge facility it entered into in connection with its October acquisition of Lumigen (Southfield, Michigan).

The remainder of the net proceeds will be used to reduce amounts outstanding under the company’s revolving credit facility.

The purpose of the offering is to reduce Beckman Coulter’s interest expense in order to fund additional R&D activities, including its molecular diagnostics project.

• Acusphere (Watertown, Massachusetts) said it has closed its previously disclosed “registered direct” offering resulting in receipt by the company of about $23.8 million in net proceeds, after deducting placement agent fees and estimated offering expenses. In the offering, the company issued 9,259,254 units, each unit consisting of one share of common stock and one warrant to purchase 0.4 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $3.11 per share, for a purchase price of $2.75 per unit. The warrants will be exercisable beginning on June 12, 2007 and until Dec. 12, 2011.

Acusphere is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops new drugs and improved formulations of existing drugs using imicroparticle technology.

• Zimmer Holdings ’ (Warsaw, Indiana) board of directors has authorized a new share repurchase program that is in addition to the $1 billion program disclosed in December 2005 (MDD, Dec. 16, 2005.

The new program authorizes purchases of up to $1 billion of the company’s common stock through Dec. 31, 2008. The earlier program authorized purchases through Dec. 31, 2007, and, as of Sept. 30, 2006, $365 million was still available for purchases under that program.

Any shares acquired will be available for general corporate purposes. The company had about 238.6 million shares of common stock outstanding as of Oct. 27.

• Matria Healthcare (Marietta, Georgia) reported that it has made an additional $10 million debt prepayment. With this prepayment, the company has achieved its stated goal to reduce its acquisition indebtedness by $175 million before year end.

“We are pleased to have completed our debt reduction as initially planned when we acquired CorSolutions [Rosemont, Illinois]. This additional prepayment will leave us with less than $280 million of acquisition debt outstanding,” said Jeff Hinton, senior VP and CFO.

Matria is a provider of health enhancement programs to health plans, employers and government agencies.

• AFP Imaging (Elmsford, New York) reported that its board of directors has authorized the company to repurchase up to $1 million of its outstanding common stock in open market purchases or privately negotiated transactions. The company said that any repurchases are intended to make appropriate adjustments to the company’s capital structure and are for general corporate purposes.

The company has 12,428,800 shares of common stock outstanding as of Dec. 12, The share repurchases will be financed by currently available cash.

AFP Imaging makes a range of X-ray imaging equipment, which has particular applications in dental, veterinary and medical diagnostics.

• CytoCore (Chicago) has tendered payment of principal and accrued interest to its last senior debt holder, resulting in the reduction of about $1.7 million in liabilities.

“The repayment of the notes and accrued interest reduces CytoCore’s liabilities and completes another major step in our financial restructuring as we strive to meet our goal of bringing liabilities to under $1.5 million by year-end, thereby positioning the company to move forward aggressively with our trials and product roll-out in 2007,” said CFO Robert McCullough Jr.

CytoCore develops cancer screening systems, which can be used in a laboratory or at the point-of-care, to assist in the early detection of cervical, endometrial and other cancers.