J&J, Guidant Team up in Drug-Eluting Stents: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

The announcement this month that Cordis Corp. is teaming up with interventional cardiology arch rival Guidant Corp. to sell the former's blockbuster Cypher drug-eluting stent (DES) seems, at least on the surface, to validate Guidant's take on the drug-eluting stent wars: the primacy of the stent's deliverability over the clinical performance of its drug component in driving stent selection by interventionalists. J&J, for its part, was also responding to the threat-many think it will be formidable-of Boston Scientific Corp., who received the much-anticipated US approval for its Taxus stent just weeks after J&J and Guidant announced their deal.