Top Device Companies

Merck Outbids Thermo Fisher To Acquire Millipore For $7.2 Billion

Germany’s Merck outbid Thermo Fisher Scientific to acquire Millipore, a maker of equipment for biotechnology laboratories. Merck’s offer of $7.2 billion topped Thermo Fisher’s earlier bid of $6 billion in what Millipore considered a hostile takeover effort. The bid caused Millipore to consider selling itself, attracting Merck’s larger and successful bid. For Merck, ownership of Millipore gives the German company a large presence in the biotechnology industry. (Click here for more)

“Merck To Pay $7.2 Billion For Millipore” – New York Times (2/28/10)

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A Friend-ly New Resource for Biomarker Validation?

Article preview from Start-Up - March 2009

Merck is helping one of its top executives launch a new nonprofit venture, called Sage, which will develop disease models and provide an open access platform for researchers to gauge the effects of perturbing them. Pharma has never really supported the diagnostics industry apart from its own internal need for biomarkers. But along with supporting drug development, Sage could actually go to that very kind of diagnostics development that pharma has not wanted to do in the past.

The Cost-Sharing Solution: The New NICE Ticket

Article preview from IN VIVO - March 2009

J&J's Velcade and Celgene's Revlimid illustrate how pharma has adapted to the NICE UK cost-effectiveness watchdog. Now that the UK precedents exist, there will be more to come. But are they really pharma's ticket to increased access, and do they assure the value to the health care system that they claim? This article originally appeared in February 2009's RPM Report.

Deals in Depth: January 2009

Article preview from IN VIVO - March 2009

January 2009 dealmaking highlights: Big Pharma consolidation is back in the news as one of the largest mega-mergers in history took place in January with Pfizer's acquisition of Wyeth for $67bn. Abbott topped the list on the device side, leaping into the vision care field with its $2.8bn purchase of Advanced Medical Optics. Meanwhile financing--mainly from private placements--for both the drug and device industries was up from the previous month, and notably pharma showed a 4x increase in private investor funding.

GI Dynamics: In Metabolic Disease a Device Might Trump Drugs

Article preview from IN VIVO - January 2009

It's not often that a company in the medical device industry, where most new products offer incremental innovation, has a chance to change the world. Start-up GI Dynamics does, though. Shooting for a non-invasive device that would replicate some of the benefits of the invasive Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery in obesity, it discovered that an endoscopically delivered implant appears to be extremely effective in type 2 diabetes, as is the predicate gastric bypass. Simple and non-invasive, the technology is potentially disruptive by reversing the disease, not just managing its symptoms.