A Medical Device Daily

SurModics(Eden Prairie, Minnesota), a provider of surface modification and drug delivery technologies to the healthcare industry, said it has obtained an option to acquire an exclusive license from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick, New Jersey), to two classes of biodegradable polymers for use in site-specific delivery of drugs to the eye.

These polymer families were developed by Dr. Joachim Kohn, director of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials and a Rutgers professor.

Kohn's research interests focus on the development of new biomaterials for prostheses, implantable drug or gene delivery systems, and tissue regeneration scaffolds. He is the inventor of 37 patents.

"SurModics continues to expand our technology offerings in ophthalmology following our acquisition of InnoRx [Mobile, Alabama] earlier this year," said Bruce Barclay, president and COO of SurModics. "By combining these polymer families with the drug delivery platform technologies acquired from InnoRx, we expect to be able to deliver a wide variety of drugs and other bioactive agents to the eye, treating such serious diseases as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME), two of the leading causes of blindness in adults today, as well as glaucoma."

Kohn said, "I am very impressed with both the technical ability of the scientific team at SurModics, and the company's proven track record of success. I believe it is particularly well suited to exploit our polymers in the ophthalmology market following its acquisition of InnoRx."

SurModics now has seven distinct families of polymers available for use in site-specific delivery of drugs to the eye. The two polymer classes from Rutgers join the two biodegradable polymer families, PolyActive and Octodex, licensed by SurModics from OctoPlus, a company based in the Netherlands. SurModics' internally developed polymer families – Bravo, Encore and Accolade – also are available for this application.

SurModics' Bravo Drug Delivery Polymer Matrix is a critical component of the Cypher sirolimus-eluting coronary stent from the Cordis (Miami Lakes, Florida) unit of Johnson & Johnson (also New Brunswick), and has been implanted in more than 1 million patients worldwide.

The Bravo matrix also is used in the ophthalmic drug delivery system currently being developed by SurModics.

The company noted that biodegradable polymers have the ability to be combined with one or more drugs and applied to a medical device, or administered alone with a drug, yet are naturally degraded in the body over time. "Both of the licensed polymer families from Rutgers, known as polycarbonates and polyarylates, are derived from the amino acid tyrosine, a naturally occurring substance in the body and have been under extensive evaluation by others for various applications," SurModics said.

The company said it has been shown that these polymers can be made into durable films, coated onto medical devices and used to deliver a variety of large and small molecules with tunable elution rates.

• Thermo Electron (Waltham, Massachusetts) said it has purchased Niton (Billerica, Massachusetts) for about $40.5 million in cash, subject to a post-closing adjustment. Niton is a provider of portable X-ray analyzers for the metals, petrochemical and environmental markets, with revenues of $36 million in 2004.

Niton will become part of the Scientific Instruments product line of Thermo's Life and Laboratory Sciences segment.

In other dealmaking news:

• Crdentia (Dallas) reported acquiring TravMed (Charlotte, North Carolina), a nationwide provider of travel and per-diem nursing services. Terms of that transaction were not released.

TravMed has a database of 4,000 nurses and currently has about 450 contracts with more than 1,200 healthcare facilities. It also has a Government Services Agreement to staff federal healthcare facilities operated by the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense.

The company has a broad reach, providing its travel and per-diem nursing staffing services in 49 states and the District of Columbia.

TravMed was founded in 1997 by Robert Litton and Steve Williams. Litton will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of TravMed and has joined the Crdentia senior management team.

James Durham, Crdentia chairman and CEO, said, "TravMed is a broad-based, highly respected and well-known name in travel nursing. The combination of TravMed with Crdentia's current travel nurse operation carves out a definitive niche for our company in the travel nurse staffing industry."

Litton said, "I believe that Crdentia's size and scope, along with its unique multidimensional approach to healthcare staffing services, will provide opportunities that will allow TravMed to grow faster than it would have on a stand-alone basis."

Crdentia also reported the acquisition of Health Industry Professionals, a provider of per-diem nursing services throughout the Detroit metropolitan area. Terms of the transaction were not released.

Health Industry Professionals reports an existing client base with major hospitals in the Detroit area and several local Fortune 500 companies where it provides staffing for on-site private medical clinics. It also offers hourly and private-duty home care services.

The company, which has a database of about 900 healthcare professionals, will continue to operate under the direction of co-founders Matthew Cahillane and C. Michael Emery, who have joined Crdentia's senior management team.

• Almost Family (Louisville, Kentucky) said it has signed an agreement to acquire the assets and business of Florida Home Health (Bradenton, Florida) from Manatee Memorial Hospital.

William Yarmuth, chairman and CEO of Almost Family, said, "This acquisition substantially increases our presence on the west coast of Florida, and is just the latest step in the execution of our business plan" to grow the company's home health business in that state.

This is the company's third Florida home health agency acquisition in the past six months.

The total purchase price for the acquisition is $3.2 million, with $2.5 million payable in cash at closing and $700,000 on a two-year note. The transaction is expected to close this coming Friday.

Almost Family is a provider of home health nursing services, in-home personal care services and facility based adult day care services in Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alabama and Indiana.