Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday it is buying Irvine-based Visiogen Inc. for $400 million.
Chicago-based Abbott’s buy of Visiogen, a maker of replacement eye lenses, is its second major OC eye device deal made this year.
Abbott spent $2.8 billion earlier this year on Santa Ana’s Advanced Medical Optics Inc., a maker of eye surgery devices, lasers and contact lens products, as its entry into the $22 billion yearly eye surgery device market.
The company is now known as Abbott Medical Optics Inc. and will oversee the Visiogen integration.
Visiogen makes an intraocular lens that is implanted in the eye to replace the natural lens.
Its lens, known as Synchrony, is used to treat a condition called presbyopia, where the eye loses its ability to focus close-up as it ages, in patients who have had their natural lenses removed because of cataracts.
Abbott is buying Visiogen because “we love” the intraocular lens category, said James Mazzo, an Abbott senior vice president and president of Abbott Medical. Abbott got the Tecnis and ReZoom intraocular lenses through the Advanced Medical deal.
The Visiogen deal also pulls Abbott into deeper competition with Bausch & Lomb Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., whose Crystalens is now the only Food and Drug Administration-approved entry in the accomodating intraocular lens segment, which is made up of lenses that work with the eye’s natural muscle.
Bausch got Crystalens when it bought Eyeonics Inc., its Aliso Viejo-based developer, in 2008. Bausch has its Bausch & Lomb Surgical hub in Aliso Viejo.
“We wanted to get into the accomodative space now, and Visiogen, as we looked at all the technologies out there, really has proven to be an effective product with their clinical data,” Mazzo said.
Visiogen is “perfectly aligned with where we want to go,” Mazzo said, mentioning that the intraocular lens market Visiogen will compete in should reach $600 million within five years.
“It’s not ‘one pair of shoes fits all patients’ as they say,” Mazzo said, adding that Visiogen has a deep pipeline and that Abbott is continuing work on its own refractive intraocular lens.
Synchrony is under review at the FDA; Visiogen has said it expects the lens to be approved in mid-2010.
Synchrony, which has been implanted in more than 1,200 eyes, has been sold in Europe since January.
Visiogen was founded in 2001 and has raised some $80 million in venture capital funding, including a $40 million round in April led by the Novartis Venture Fund, the venture capital arm of Swiss drug maker Novartis AG.
Abbott said it expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
Mazzo said no decisions have been made about how Abbott plans to integrate Visiogen, including the role of Reza Zadno, the company’s founder and chief executive, because the deal hasn’t been closed yet.
Mazzo said that he’s a believer in Zadno and the Visiogen team, and noted that he’s talked with Zadno about Visiogen for some years.
