Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Navidea expands from Ohio into Andover office

By Rodney H. Brown

Ohio life sciences company Navidea Biopharmaceuticals Inc. is opening a business office in Andover to help it commercialize an imaging agent to detect lymph-node cancer it plans to launch later this year.

Based in Dublin, Ohio, Navidea (NYSE Amex: NAVB) said in a release that the “corporate headquarters, with clinical, manufacturing, regulatory and administration functions” will stay in the Buckeye state, while Andover will house business development and commercialization personnel. That office’s first mission will be to handle the launch of Lymphoseek, a radiopharmaceutical agent that Navidea says will help avoid the unnecessary removal of non-cancerous lymph nodes by providing more accurate detection.

Mark Pykett, Navidea president and CEO, said in a statement in the release that expanding into the Greater Boston market “will enhance our access to industry partners, key business and technical leaders, and major academic medical centers.”

Navidea is also working on AZD4694, an imaging agent that binds to Beta-amyloid deposits in the brain to show the spread of Alzheimer’s disease, and RIGScan, a tumor-specific radio-labeled agent based on monoclonal antibodies that is intended to identify even tiny amount of cancerous tissue.

Other makers of imaging agents call the area home as well. Repligen Corp. in December sent its pancreatic imaging agent, called SecreFlo, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agent is used in combination with MRI to improve detection of pancreatic duct abnormalities. Repligen has asked for priority review, which, if granted, would yield an approval decision within six months instead of the usual 10 months.

In March 2011, Lantheus Medical Imaging Inc. said that it plans to offer $150 million in senior unsecured notes to enable it to make a distribution to its ultimate parent company, Lantheus MI Holdings Inc.