A Medical Device Daily Staff Report

Zila (Phoenix) has completed the acquisition of Professional Dental Technologies (Pro-Dentec; Batesville, Arkansas) a privately held dental products company, in a $34 million cash transaction.

“With the acquisition of Pro-Dentec, we have completed a remarkable transformation of Zila into a cancer detection company. Pro-Dentec provides us the means to distribute our oral cancer detection products directly to dental professionals through a highly-regarded national sales force that is already profitably selling complementary Soft Tissue Management products,” said Douglas Burkett, PhD, chairman, CEO and president of Zila.

To facilitate the acquisition of Pro-Dentec, the company completed two tranches of a $40 million private placement of equity and debt through its financial advisor and placement agent, Roth Capital Partners, with the final $16 million tranche for future working capital scheduled to fund this past Wednesday.

Zila is a cancer diagnostic company initially focused on oral cancer:

Magellan Biosciences (Chelmsford, Massachusetts), a developer of clinical-diagnostic products, said it has acquired TREK Diagnostic Systems (Cleveland), a provider of clinical-diagnostic products for infectious diseases. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

TREK will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Magellan and continue to serve customers under the TREK Diagnostic Systems brand name. The existing management team and the company’s roughly 150 U.S.- and UK-based employees are expected to remain with the company.

According to Magellan President/CEO, Robert Rosenthal, the TREK acquisition significantly expands Magellan’s commercial presence in clinical diagnostics. “Importantly, this transaction accelerates our strategy to become a leading diagnostics company focused on products for hospital-based labs and near-patient testing.

TREK’s signature product lines, the VersaTREK automated microbial detection system and the Sensititre automated susceptibility and identification testing system, are designed to provide cost-effective improvements in workflow efficiencies, ergonomics, and test-result performance.