Angiotech's Life After Drug Eluting Stents
Executive Summary
Angiotech, best known for formulating the paclitaxel that goes on Boston Scientific's drug-eluting stent, has has signed two orthopedics deals; it's acquired NeuColl Inc., a private developer of collagen-based biomaterials for orthopedic applications and has also allied with Orthovita Inc., which will distribute Angiotech's hemostatic biomaterial in orthopedics markets. These, together with a string of other acquisitions in the past year, have diversified Angiotech into interventional cardiology, vascular surgery, anti-adhesion in gynecological surgery, and orthopedics--apparently unrelated fields. That represents a great deal of diversity for a mid-sized company with limited resources, but all of the areas share a common theme. Beyond the drug-eluting stent, Angiotech believes that potentially hundreds of large markets exist where drugs can improve the performance of devices.