In Vivo presents another installment of our quarterly review of dealmaking--in this case February 2001-May 2001. Our data comes from Windhover's Strategic Transactions Database. We include medical device financings by industry segment and by deal type; medical device M&A; diagnostic financings and alliances by product category; pharma and biotech alliances by technology segment; pharma and biotech alliances by deal type, and pharma and biotech financings by market segment and therapeutic category.

Inverness Medical Technology's purchase of struggling diabetes testing start-up LXN fits well with the larger company'stwo-pronged strategy of cementing its relationship with J&J's LifeScan Inc. business unit and diversifying into emerging areas of diabetes testing. Inverness also announced that the partners have amended their distribution and marketing agreement to give LifeScan bigger discounts on meters in return for bigger purchase orders.

Looking for high acquisition valuations like those paid for Lifescan by J&J and for Medisense by Abbott, a host of new diabetes start-ups are trying to develop alternatives to finger-stick home glucose testing. Most companies are developing less-invasive or non-invasive technologies to reduce or entirely eliminate the pain of testing. LXN, on the other hand, is aiming to improve glucose control through an at-home version of the state-of-the-art glycated protein test.