A Medical Device Daily
Celsis International (Chicago), a life science products and services company, reported that it has acquired In Vitro Technologies (IVT; Baltimore) for $30 million in cash and an earn-out consideration capped at $5 million.
Celsi said that the acquisition adds products and services to its portfolio for the in vitro ADME (absorption/distribution/metabolism/excretion) toxicology market.
IVT supplies products and services to improve the drug discovery and development process with a portfolio that includes proprietary ADME-Tox products such as fresh and cyropreserved cells and enzymes.
An estimated 50% of drug candidates fail in clinical trials due to unanticipated pharmacokinetic and toxicology issues, Celsis said in a statement, and the integration of IVT into Celsis “creates the selection of candidates for the clinical trial stage.”
Jay LeCoque, CEO of Celsis, said the acquisition creates “clear cross-selling opportunities which we expect to deliver material growth in the coming years. Celsis is well positioned to continue its track record of strong growth both organically and by acquisition.”
Celsis provides products and services to the pharma, biopharma, and personal care and beverage industries through three businesses; rapid detection systems, analytical services and in vitro technologies. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
In other dealmaking activity, Bioheart (Sunrise, Florida) said it has acquired an option to the worldwide exclusive rights to adiopose-derived therapeutic cell technology from Tissue Genesis (Honolulu, Hawaii), being developed to treat heart attacks and congestive heart failure.
The agreement provides for up-front payments – the amount not disclosed – and milestone payments to Tissue Genesis. Upon successful completion of animal studies and approval of an investigational new drug application, Bioheart said it expects to launch human clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe.
The company plans to administer the adipose-derived cells into patients via a combination of coronary infusion and direct intramyocardial injection with its MyoCath needle-injection catheter.
Bioheart says that adipose-derived cells are an abundant tissue source rich in microvascular, myogenic and angiogenic cells and easily removed from patients and that Tissue Genesis' TGI1200 cell isolation system will rapidly process adipose tissue to isolate and produce large quantities of regenerative cells for treating patients suffering a heart attack.
Bioheart will have the exclusive right to negotiate a worldwide exclusive license to all of Tissue Genesis' pat-ents and technology for use in the heart attack and heart failure markets.
“The Tissue Genesis cell isolation system will allow us to broaden our portfolio of product candidates and hopefully give cardiologists a way to prevent some of the damage caused by heart attacks,” said Howard Leonhardt, CEO and chairman of Bioheart. “It has always been a goal of our company to develop an acute treatment for heart attack patients in addition to our proposed MyoCell therapy for chronic heart failure.
“We intend to demonstrate the benefits of a two-part, percutaneous treatment plan: first, a quick bolus of isolated non-cultured cells shortly after the heart attack, and then a full dose of the cultured MyoCell myogenic cells about 14 to 18 days later to attempt to recover the remaining scar tissue.”
Bioheart is focused on developing cell-based therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, including myocardial infarction and CHF.
It is currently enrolling patients in its European Phase II/III clinical trial named SEISMIC to test its lead product candidates, MyoCell and MyoCath. The MyoCell implantation therapy is designed to regenerate areas of damaged myocardial tissue. MyoCath is a percutaneous needle-injection catheter engineered to deliver cell therapy or other compounds to myocardial tissue.
Tissue Genesis says that its cell isolation technology supports a family of platform systems enabling autologous, point-of-care, adipose-derived therapeutic cell isolation in under two hours.