The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

This was a fairly busy week for Canadian biotech deals, including a new brain-y collaboration for MaRS; peace at Patheon; some overallotment and some underallotment; some diversification by Canadian pharma (even if not on quite the scale of Pfizer’s deal with Protalix); and some trans-Atlantic acquisitiveness of a Canadian company’s own devicing [sic., sorry].  Don’t stop now…

Bedfellows

• Baycrest and MaRS are teaming up to form a new for-profit company called Cogniciti (not with a “y”).  The company will produce research-based products, games and training protocols.  The first product, Memory@Work™, is a corporate training program to use memory strategies to improve personal performance in the workplace. Other products in the pipeline include brain exercise games for mobile devices and the web.
• JLL Partners’ and Patheon Inc. (TSX: PTI), long locked in a takeover battle, settled the related litigation this week.  JLL got $1.5 million and agreed to restrictions on its ability to take future runs at Patheon’s remaing shares.
• Prism Medical Ltd. (TSXV: PM) is on a UK buying spree, snapping up a UK distributor of moving and handling equipment and services for the mobility impaired, following November’s acquisition of a UK durable medical equipment supplier. Prism again goes for a split payment structure — an upfront cash payment of $0.7m and deferred payments in the amount $0.5m, repayable over three years with 7% interest.

Securities (funny you should call them that)

• On the good news front, Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (TSX: ONC) (NASDAQ: ONCY) announced that the full over-allotment of 637,500 units was exercised by underwriters Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Canaccord Capital and Bloom Burton & Co., bringing the total haul on the unit offering to US$14,662,500. 
• The Jenex Corporation (TSXV: JEN, Frankfurt: JNX), which makes heat-based medical products, completed a $162,700.23 private placement of units last week, despite being in the midst of a suspended annual meeting, a cease trade from the Alberta Securities Commission and having trading halted on the TSX-V.  The company’s new managment notes that resuming compliance and trading is “[a]nother priority following completion of [the] financing,” along with “re-launch under its new management team and Board; marketing support for its products; restructuring costs; settlement payments to former management and certain trade creditors; and for working capital and general corporate purposes.”  Kingsdale Capital Markets acted as agent for an 8% cash commission and 10% warrants.
• SQI Diagnostics Inc. (TSXV: SQD) closed the private placement that it launched a few weeks ago.  The deal was launched as a $16 million common share offering, but SQI ended up with a much more typical 2009 offering of units (1 common share plus 1/2 of a 2-year $4.00 warrant), selling 2,398,104 units at $2.75 per unit for gross proceeds of about $6.6 million.

IPs Passing in the Night (One South-bound and one North-bound license)

• Dow AgroSciences licensed Vancouver-based Agrisoma’s “Engineered Trait Loci (ETL)” technology [ed. homologous recombination.], though financial terms were not disclosed.  The license is exclusive for major food crops, and non-exclusive for other crop species.
• Sanofi-aventis Canada is licensing a new kind of epinephrine auto-injector from Intelliject, Inc. (in case your Epi-Pen just isn’t cutting it for you as a way to combat anaphylaxis).  We know there is “an upfront payment and … [possible] future milestone payments and royalties,” but we don’t know how much.  The product development story is pretty good — the injector was invented by highly allergic twins, one who got a masters in systems engineering, and the other got an MD/Ph.D. — and now the story has a good ending I bet (even if the specifics aren’t disclosed).  Sanofi-aventis Canada’s story is good too: Hugh O’Neill, President and CEO says the deal is part of the company’s “diversification strategy…. to move away from the traditional model of a pharmaceutical company into a true patient-centric healthcare solutions provider.”

Imaging That (Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting spurs deals)

• IMRIS Inc. (TSX:IM), which closed a $20 million bought deal in November, signed a new Master OEM Agreement with Siemens Healthcare. Siemens will supply magnetic resonance imaging scanners and angiography systems as component parts for IMRIS’s fully integrated image guided therapy suites. No financial terms were disclosed.
• Sentinelle Medical Inc., which makes MRI coils and visualization software, announced a distribution agreement with Ultrasonix Medical Corporation, which makes ultrasound imaging systems.  The companies are presenting an “integrated solution for co-registration of MRI and real-time ultrasound imaging that permits investigation of the same anatomical features under both imaging modalities, at the same time.”

Black and Scholes Kidnap Schrodinger’s Cat (uncertainty is optional)

• Aptilon Corporation (TSXV: APZ), which markets pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies’ products to physicians through its online tools, added Robert H. Steinfeld, LL.M., J.D. to its Board and granted a total of 7,580,000 stock options, of which 6,200,000 were issued to directors and officers. Each option is valid for five years, is exercisable at a price of $0.105, and vests over three years in even quarterly fractions.  Aptilon acquired database assets from Direct Medical Data in September, and is putting DMD’s three partners to work in various Director and Officer positions at DMD Marketing Corp., a wholly-owned Aptilon subsidiary.
• Amorfix Life Sciences (TSX: AMF) decided not to accelerate the expiry of its warrants after all.  A 10-day VWAP of $1.20 triggered the acceleration announcement in October, but the shares spent much of last week trading under the $1.00 exercise price.  The warrants will retain their original April 29, 2011 due date.