A Medical Device Daily

Inovio Biomedical (San Diego, California) reported that it has granted Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (Madison, New Jersey), a division of Wyeth , a worldwide non-exclusive license to its DNA delivery technology for intramuscular applications of certain therapeutic DNA vaccines.

Wyeth will pay Inovio a $4.5 million upfront license fee, annual license maintenance fees, research support and up to $60 million in payments based on successful completion of clinical and regulatory milestones. Inovio will exclusively supply Wyeth with electroporation devices for the vaccines included in the license agreement and will receive royalties on the sale of products covered by the license.

Inovio is focused on a cancer ablation therapy and development of multiple DNA vaccines.

iCardiac Technologies (Rochester, New York), a company formed earlier this year to commercialize cardiac safety technologies developed at the University of Rochester Medical Center , reported that it has completed its Series A offering with an additional investment of $2 million, led by the national venture capital firms of Advantage Capital Partners and Stonehenge Capital Company. It said the new capital brings its Series A investment to $4 million.

iCardiac previously entered into an agreement with the University of Rochester to license and commercialize technology and biomarkers that enable pharmaceutical companies to more effectively determine whether a drug poses cardiac risks.

Tim Cockshutt, a managing director with Advantage Capital, “iCardiac is well positioned to resolve what is perhaps one of the largest safety-related bottlenecks in modern drug development.”

Brian Model, a vice president with Stonehenge Capital, said that the venture capital firm identified iCardiac as the clear technology leader in the field of advanced cardiac safety biomarkers and this investment will now allow iCardiac to continue to grow both its workforce and its business.

Mikael Totterman, CEO of iCardiac, said the company will use the additional funds to meet the “increased interest in [our] technology by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.”

iCardiac has evolved from research carried out at the Heart Research Follow-up Program at the University of Rochester. The company’s technology provides characterization of the cardiac safety profiles of in-development and on-market drugs.

In other financing activity:

• Advanced BioPhotonics (Bohemia, New York), a developer of medical imaging using advanced infrared technology, said that it has closed on a $2 million financing with institutional investors.

Denis O’Connor, company CEO, said, “While our technology platform has promise in a multitude of applications, we continue to focus on applications with the nearest term commercialization opportunities. We believe that with this additional financing, the company will be able to make significant progress towards commercialization.”

Advanced BioPhotonics provides imaging technology for clinicians and researchers for use in the detection and management of diseases affecting perfusion or reperfusion of tissue or organs.

• Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp; Burlington, North Carolina) reported entering into an accelerated share repurchase agreement with an affiliate of Lehman Brothers to repurchase about $250 million of LabCorp stock. This repurchase is part of LabCorp’s previously announced stock repurchase program.

LabCorp purchased about 3.4 million shares for subsequent delivery for a prepayment of $250 million. The purchase price for these shares is subject to an adjustment based on the volume weighted average price of LabCorp’s stock during a period following execution of the agreement. The purchase price adjustment is expected to be settled in 1Q07. All of the shares repurchased under the agreement will be retired.

LabCorp is a provider of diagnostic technologies, including genomic testing, with annual revenues of $3.3 billion in 2005.

• PerkinElmer (Boston) reported that its board has authorized the repurchase of up to 10 million shares of its common stock over the next four years.

PerkinElmer is a provider to the health sciences and photonics markets.

• Health Care Property Investors (Long Beach, California) reported that it has priced a public offering of 29,150,000 shares of its common stock at $29.85 a share. HCP also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase an additional 4,372,500 shares of common stock to cover over-allotments.

The gross proceeds of the offering will be about $870 million or about $1 billion if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full.

Closing of the offering is expected Nov. 10.

Proceeds from the offering will be used to repay amounts outstanding under HCP’s credit facilities, which were used to fund a portion of the consideration for HCP’s Oct. 5 acquisition of CNL Retirement Properties, and for general corporate purposes.