A Medical Device Daily

OSI Systems (Hawthorne, California) reported completing its acquisition of Blease Medical Holdings (Chesham, UK), a manufacturer of anesthesia systems, vaporizers and ventilators. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Blease will join the OSI Healthcare Group, comprised of Spacelabs Medical (Issaquah, Washington), Dolphin Medical (Hawthorne, California) and Osteometer MediTech (also Hawthorne).

OSI said Blease will work closely with patient monitoring systems manufacturer Spacelabs to develop products and applications focused on the perioperative market.

Deepak Chopra, chairman and CEO of OSI Systems, said, “This acquisition provides Blease and Spacelabs with the opportunity to further enhance their growing presence in the perioperative market and enables us to be more competitive in the Asian and European marketplace[s], where the bundling of anesthesia and patient monitoring systems is commonplace.“

He noted that while each company will continue to do business under its own name — and there are no immediate plans to integrate the brands — “leveraging in manufacturing service and sales wherever possible would be explored.“

Nicholas Ong, formerly vice president of global marketing at Spacelabs, has been named president of Blease.

OSI is a global developer of security and inspection systems, medical monitoring products and optoelectronic-based components, as well as a provider of engineering and manufacturing services.

Inverness Medical Innovations (IMI; Waltham, Massachusetts), a manufacturer of medical devices and consumer and professional diagnostics products, reported signing an agreement to acquire privately held Binax (Portland, Maine), a developer of rapid diagnostic products, primarily related to the respiratory system.

IMI will acquire all of the stock of Binax in exchange for 1,433,333 shares of its common stock and additional consideration of $8.6 million in cash at closing.

Inverness has agreed to register the shares issuable in the transaction prior to the closing. The agreement also provides for additional consideration to the Binax shareholders of up to $11 million in cash, contingent upon Binax meeting product development objectives over five years.

“We expect to benefit from Binax's established reputation in respiratory diagnostics, and we are excited about the potential new product development opportunities,“ said Ron Zwanziger, Inverness CEO.

The transaction, which is expected to close in 1Q05 or early 2Q05, is subject to Inverness obtaining the consent of its lenders and other customary conditions.

In other dealmaking news:

• West Pharmaceutical Services (Lionville, Pennsylvania) reported completing the sale of a substantial majority interest in its Drug Delivery business, effective Feb. 8, to Archimedes Pharma, a new UK-based European specialty pharma company backed by Warburg Pincus.

West received $7.1 million cash, approximately 14% of the stock of Archimedes and a royalty interest in certain of that company's revenues in exchange for substantially all of its Drug Delivery assets.

West said its Drug Delivery unit will be classified as “discontinued operation“ in subsequent financial reports. The company will continue to operate its clinical services business, which is being held for sale or other disposition.

• Infotrieve (Los Angeles), a provider of content software technology and information services, reported the acquisition of GenSys Software (Santa Monica, California), a provider of the GenSys/ELN electronic laboratory notebook for life sciences, chemistry and other research-intensive industries.

The GenSys/ELN, Infotrieve said, will serve as anchor for its life sciences electronic research platform designed to increase the value of organizational content and improve scientists' existing workflow. It will enable links from electronic laboratory notebooks to discovery tools, literature and scientific data, laboratory product information and integrated retrieval capabilities for literature and laboratory products.

• BeamOne (San Diego) reported completing its purchase of the medical products irradiation service centers of Titan Scan Technologies, a subsidiary of The Titan Corp. (San Diego), bringing Titan Scan's three contract sterilization service centers under the management of BeamOne. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

BeamOne's service centers in Denver, Colorado; Lima, Ohio, and San Diego will continue to provide contract sterilization services to the medical device industry using Titan's electron beam (e-beam) irradiation systems.

• National Dentex (NDC; Wayland, Massachusetts), one of the largest owner/operators of dental laboratories in the U.S., reported the acquisition of Wornson-Polzin Dental Laboratory (Mankato, Minnesota), effective Feb. 1.

Wornson-Polzin had sales in excess of $3 million in its most recent fiscal year ended July 31, 2004. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

NDC serves a customer base of more than 20,000 dentists through dental laboratories located in 29 states.

The company's dental laboratories provide a full range of custom-made dental prosthetic appliances, including dentures, crowns and fixed bridges, and other dental specialties.