Ebb & Flow

Following in the footsteps of PDL (NASDAQ:PDLI) and Enzon (NYSE:ENZ), Angiotech (TSX:ANP; NASDAQ:ANPI) last week said it will spin out everything except royalties derived from paclitaxel-eluting stents into a separate private company called Angiotech Pharmaceutical Interventions (API). One goal is to separate the operating business from declining royalties on the Taxus line of paclitaxel-eluting coronary stents.

API will have several marketed products, plus clinical-stage device and drug candidates focused on acute and surgical applications. The clinical stage candidates are mostly variations of paclitaxel-eluting stents; it also has MultiStem, a stem cell therapy to treat acute myocardial infarction that started Phase I trials in December 2007 (see BioCentury, Dec. 24)...