Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Monday a stent it developed with Boston Scientific Corp. met its goals in a pair of clinical trials.
Angiotech said the Taxus Element stent worked as well as an older Boston Scientific stent called Taxus Express at treating lesions in blood vessels, and worked better than a different version of Express at preventing tissue from building up inside the stent.
Stents are mesh-metal tubes that are placed in blood vessels after they are surgically cleared of fatty plaque. Some stents, including Taxus Express, are coated with drugs to prevent scar tissue from blocking the vessel again.
Shares of the Vancouver-based drug and medical device maker climbed 12 cents, or 11.1 percent, to $1.20 in Monday trading.
The larger of the two studies compared Taxus Element, which is a drug-coated stent, to a drug-coated version of Taxus Express. The stents were implanted in 1,262 patients with new blood vessel lesions. Angiotech said 5.6 percent of the Element patients experienced failure of the targeted lesion, compared to 6.1 percent of the Express patients.
The company said safety for the two stents was similar.
Angiotech said Taxus Element performed better than a bare metal version of Taxus Express at preventing tissue buildup in patients with small blood vessels. Taxus Element has not been approved in the U.S., but Angiotech said European Union approval is expected in the second quarter, followed by U.S. approval in mid-2011 and clearance in Japan in late 2011 or early 2012.
Earlier in the day, Boston Scientific said it was suspending sales of defibrillator implants after it did not alert federal regulators that it changed the way the devices were made. Shares of the Natick, Mass., company plunged 98 cents, or 12.6 percent, to $6.80. Earlier they set an annual low of $6.31.
