Insulet Corp. (NSDQ:PODD) inked a Canadian distribution deal with GlaxoSmithKline plc (NYSE:GSK) for its OmniPod insulin management system.
The deal gives the British pharma giant — stung by recent problems with its Avandia diabetes drug — exclusive rights to market and sell Bedford, Mass.-based Insulet’s OmniPod system north of the border.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Independent diabetes analyst David Kliff said the earnings impact for Insulet would probably not be immediate.
Kliff, who publishes the Diabetic Investor, writes that the deal could be Glaxo’s attempt to improve its reputation in the diabetes market after the Avandia debacle. For Insulet, the deal is an expansion into a small but important market, according to Kliff.
It’s also an expansion of the company’s international distribution operation. In January 2010, it signed a five-year, $100 million deal with Ypsomed Holding AG (SWP:YPSN) to distribute the OmniPod system in 11 countries, including China.
Insulet reported higher sales but wider losses during the fourth quarter. Annual losses, however, narrowed by 16 percent, and the company made a final, $33 million payment on its $60 million credit line with Deerfield Partners in December 2010, more than nine months ahead of schedule.
PODD shares were trading at $17.56 in mid-day activity, up 0.40 percent.
Here’s a roundup of other companies announcing new distribution deals.
- Seahorse signs In Vitro Technologies for distribution in Australia and New Zealand
North Billerica, Mass.-based Seahorse Bioscience Inc., which develops instruments for assessing cellular bioenergetics, announced In Vitro Technologies Pty Ltd as the new distributor of Seahorse XF Analyzers and consumables in Australia and New Zealand. Seahorse Extracellular Flux Analyzers provide the first and only kinetic method to measure the two major energy producing pathways — mitochondrial respiration and glycolysis — in living cells in a microplate.
Read more - Caliper and Covaris ink co-marketing deal for sequencing technology
Hopkinton, Mass.-based Caliper Life Sciences Inc. (NSDQ:CALP) and Covaris Inc. announced a co-marketing agreement which will leverage Covaris’ acoustic DNA shearing platforms and Caliper’s automation and microfluidics technologies to develop automated workflows for next generation sequencing experiments. Caliper has developed a complete suite of solutions for library construction, sample analysis, and nucleic acid fractionation, which significantly reduces manual manipulations, increases throughput and improves sample-to-sample consistency. Woburn, Mass.-based Covaris’ sample preparation technology, which is based on its Adaptive Focused Acoustic technology, performs biological and chemical sample preparation with the single-sample S220, the multi-sample E220 and high throughput parallel-processing LE220.
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