Executive Summary

Boston Scientific has received Japanese approval for its bare-metal stent, Liberte, which also serves as the platform for the firm's second-generation paclitaxel-eluting stent, Taxus Liberte. "The approval of our Liberte stent represents an important step in the evolution of our drug-eluting stent (DES) programme in Japan," said Paul LaViolette, Boston's COO. The firm's Taxus Liberte has been CE-marked for sale in Europe since September 2005, and it hopes to launch the DES in the US during 2007. The firm is not yet ready to speculate on when the DES is likely to penetrate the Japanese market, but claims that it can now look forward to long-awaited Japanese approval of its first-generation Taxus Express 2 stent in mid-2007. Boston claims that Liberte provides physicians with enhanced lesion access in challenging anatomy due to its thin struts and highly flexible cell design.