Aliso Viejo-based Eyeonics Inc. is the newest member of a small but growing club: Orange County medical device makers that are testing the public markets.
Late last month, Eyeonics filed to raise up to $86.3 million in an initial public offering.
Eyeonics makes eye replacement lenses for cataract patients. Its lead product is Crystalens, an implantable lens that gives people “natural vision” after cataract surgery.
The company received regulatory clearance for Crystalens in 2003 and began selling it in 2004. Eyeonics has sold about 75,000 Crystalenses to some 1,000 doctors, the company said in a filing.
Investors in Eyeonics include Versant Ventures, which has offices in Newport Beach and Menlo Park. William Link, a Versant managing director, was Eyeonics’ first investor and worked with Chief Executive J. Andy Corley at Irvine-based Allergan Inc. Link is an Eyeonics director.
Eyeonics posted a loss of $3.5 million for the first half of the year. Sales were $13.6 million. For the first six months of 2006, the company lost $4.4 million on revenue of $8.4 million.
The company’s founders, Corley and Stuart Cumming, won the Business Journal’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award in 2005.
Eyeonics intends to use proceeds from the offering to establish an international sales and marketing organization, expand its existing domestic sales force as well as use the money for research.
Eyeonics, which was started nine years ago, has some 100 workers, most in sales and marketing.
Eyeonics has applied to have its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker “EYON.” The company hasn’t set a date for its offering.
When Eyeonics goes out, it will join several other companies that have either started trading or are gearing up to do so.
Shares of SenoRx Inc., an Aliso Viejo maker of breast biopsy devices, were recently trading some 20% above its late March opening price. It counts a market value of about $170 million.
Irvine-based Masimo Corp., which makes devices to measure hospitalized patients’ oxygen levels, has set terms for its offering and could raise more than $200 million at its high end. It hasn’t set a date yet. Devax Inc., a Lake Forest company that makes stents to treat blood vessel diseases, filed plans to go public in May but hasn’t set terms or a date yet.
Moving Past Satraplatin
Irvine drug maker Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. is working to move past last month’s regulatory setback with satraplatin, its lead prostate cancer candidate.
The Food and Drug Administration advisory panel unanimously recommended that the agency not approve satraplatin until Spectrum licensing partner GPC Biotech AG submitted full clinical trial survival data. Now Spectrum said it’s signed a worldwide licensing deal with Indena SPA of Italy for ortataxel, a cancer fighting drug.
Ortataxel has seen positive results in attacking tumors that don’t respond to traditional chemotherapy drugs.
The deal gives Spectrum exclusive development and commercialization rights to ortataxel. It will pay an unspecified upfront amount to Indena and also make additional payments based on achieving certain regulatory and sales milestones.
As for satraplatin, GPC last week said it was withdrawing its application for the drug in order to focus on getting overall survival results and integrating the data “into the strongest possible (New Drug Application) submission,” said Bernd Seizinger, GPC’s chief executive, in a release.
Ev3 Buy
Ev3 Inc., a Minnesota-based device maker with operations in Irvine, said last month it is buying FoxHollow Technologies Inc. of Redwood City for about $780 million in cash and stock.
Ev3 makes devices to treat vascular disease, while FoxHollow makes products for treating arterial blockages. The combined company is set to have a market value of some $1.7 billion, employ about 1,700 people and will be based in Plymouth, Minn., with divisions in Irvine and Redwood City, according to a release.
Ev3 was the longtime majority shareholder in Micro Therapeutics Inc., a maker of devices that tackled blood diseases. Ev3 bought out Micro Therapeutics in 2006 for about $115 million.
Money for Dental Care
Community Care Health Centers in Huntington Beach, St. Joseph Hospital/Puente a la Salud in Orange, and Friends of Children and the Gary Center, both of La Habra, are among grant recipients from the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation to create dental programs for poor children.
Program underwriters include 3M ESPE Dental Products in Irvine, Sybron Dental Specialties Inc., a unit of Danaher Corp. that’s moving to Anaheim from Newport Beach and Nobel Biocare, which has an operation in Yorba Linda.
