With eye on Heron's ri­val prod­uct, Paci­ra to buy MyoScience to for­ti­fy its Ex­par­el fran­chise

As Paci­ra braces it­self ahead of the FDA de­ci­sion of Heron Ther­a­peu­tics’ ri­val non-opi­oid treat­ment, the com­pa­ny is beef­ing up its pain man­age­ment fran­chise, by ac­quir­ing a sys­tem that us­es in­tense­ly cold ther­a­py on a spe­cif­ic nerve to re­lieve pain, to com­ple­ment its flag­ship Ex­par­el treat­ment.

Paci­ra $PCRX on Tues­day said it was ac­quir­ing pri­vate­ly-held med­ical tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny MyoScience for $120 mil­lion up­front to se­cure ac­cess to the lat­ter’s iover­aº sys­tem — an FDA-ap­proved hand­held de­vice used to de­liv­er pre­cise, con­trolled dos­es of cold tem­per­a­ture on­ly to tar­get­ed nerves, which are thus thwart­ed from send­ing pain sig­nals — eas­ing pain and al­low­ing for de­creased opi­oid con­sump­tion. Pain re­lief can last up to three months, as the nerve re­gen­er­ates over time and re­sumes sig­nal­ing. The sys­tem is ap­proved for symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with os­teoarthri­tis of the knee as well as gen­er­al sur­gi­cal use.

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