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

The announcement this month that Cordis Corp. (a Johnson & Johnson operating company) 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. [See Deal] Indeed, this is no simple co-promotion: a key feature of this deal is J&J's ability to access Guidant's stent delivery technology. Guidant, which has been much criticized for squandering its market leadership in bare metal stents by falling behind in the development of its drug-eluting product, has long been telling proponents and opponents that once the dust clears and all of the leading interventional cardiology companies are on the market with drug-eluting stents, the clinical efficacy of the drug component will no longer be a differentiating factor. The real winner, the company claims, will be the player that has the most physician-friendly product, which will place great value on the stent delivery system, a component that interventionalists have long valued from Guidant, as attested to by its market leadership in the bare metal segment.