Sun Healthcare Group Inc., the Irvine-based nursing home chain that’s made a comeback on Wall Street, just closed its $350 million buy of Harborside Healthcare Corp. Harborside, a Boston-based nursing and home healthcare company, was owned by Investcorp, the global investment management firm.
Harborside has 75 skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living facilities with about 9,000 licensed beds in 10 states.
As part of the deal, Sun inherited and refinanced Harborside’s debt. The company also said it got a $485 million line of credit from several companies led by Credit Suisse.
Getting Harborside in the fold also may be a strategy shift, Chief Executive Richard Matros said in a release.
“Having completely deconstructed and reconstructed Sun’s asset base during the last five years, management believes it now has a strong platform with which to grow the company organically and without dependence on additional acquisitions to achieve competitive margins,” Matros said.
Earlier, Matros called buying Harborside a “transforming event” for Sun, which re-emerged from bankruptcy reorganization a few years back.
Harborside’s focus on what he called quality and higher-acuity, or sicker, patients, “line up perfectly with Sun’s initiatives,” Matros said.
Silicone Standoff
As silicone breast implants make a comeback, a small company is looking to challenge Irvine-based Allergan Inc. and rival Mentor Corp.
Sientra Inc., a Santa Barbara company that’s focused on plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine, just received an $85 million second round of financing. OrbiMed Advisors LLC of New York led the deal. Clarus Ventures of Boston and San Francisco co-led it. Goldman Sachs & Co. and TIAA-CREF also participated.
Sientra said in a release that it will use the money to acquire the assets of Silimed Inc., a Dallas-based developer of breast implants for both cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, build up its commercial business, advance product development and fund its ongoing operational expenses.
Silimed’s also doing late-stage clinical trials for silicone breast implants, which had been at the eye of a safety storm for some 15 years.
In November, the U.S. federal government lifted its 1992 cosmetic ban on the use of silicone breast implants when it gave Allergan and Santa Barbara-based Mentor clearance to sell them.
Hani Zeini, who was the head of Inamed Aesthetics prior to last year’s acquisition by Allergan, is a cofounder of Sientra. Robert Adelman, Sientra’s cofounder and an OrbiMed private equity partner, praised Zeini, noting that he was also vice president of worldwide sales for Inamed, according to a Red Herring article.
“We got the guy who made it happen,” Adelman told Red Herring.
Drug Boost
Avanir Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Aliso Viejo-based drug maker that’s had some hard times as of late, got a boost earlier this month, thanks to a drug trial.
Avanir’s shares went up 308% on April 18 to $5.19 after a clinical trial showed that its Zenvia drug candidate significantly lessened nerve pain in diabetics.
The study showed that diabetic patients who got Zenvia, instead of a placebo, reported significantly less pain in their personal journals during a 90-day period.
Avanir also said participants who took Zenvia reported improvements on pain relief and intensity scales.
The drug maker’s shares once traded as high as $18.14 in February 2006, but fell sharply, reaching a low of $1.07 last month.
The company saw a heavy sell-off in October, when the Food and Drug Administration asked for more data on Zenvia instead of approving it. Avanir said it plans to meet with regulators to discuss the next clinical study for the drug.
Bits and Pieces:
In other Allergan news, President F. Michael Ball rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Botox Cosmetic Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange said it received a pledge of $1.5 million from Josie Y.S. Lee to name a pediatric intensive care unit that’s scheduled to open this fall. Lee’s granddaughter, Kelly Tarantello, spent a significant amount of time in the unit when she was a baby Ev3 Inc., a medical device maker, said the operations of Irvine’s Micro Therapeutics Inc., which it bought in early 2006, now are under its neurovascular division. An item in the April 16 column mentioned Micro Therapeutics as a separate entity TriZetto Group Inc., a Newport Beach healthcare software company, said it renewed and expanded a software hosting and licensing deal with QualChoice of Arkansas Inc. Little Rock, Ark.-based QualChoice is a managed care company with more than 80,000 members Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Tustin drug developer, said that preclinical data showed that its 2C3, a monoclonal antibody, was effective as Avastin, a cancer treatment drug by Genentech, to inhibit cancerous tumor growth.
