NEW YORK–In a move to separate disparate business activities, Medis Technologies is spinning off its CellScan work into a new entity called Cell Kinetics Ltd. Cell Kinetics will commercialize equipment for monitoring living cells in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs, and Medis will continue developing fuel cells.
Robert Lifton, chairman and CEO of Medis, says the split will enable analysts and investors to "make a decision as to whether they're interested in one of these companies" without buying both. Lifton believes the spin-off will "create significantly greater values in the Cell Kinetics company than presently exist because today people that are looking at Medis are looking at it essentially [as fuel cells]."
The decision to form Cell Kinetics arose when Medis scientists discovered a method for keeping 70 percent of cells alive for over 48 hours in the CellScan system by coating a grid within its cytometer. Medis expects the lengthier observation time to provide greater utility to research institutions. CellScan can monitor the activity of up to 10,000 single cells within individual wells, and Lifton says researchers or clinicians can use it with cancer cells to "measure the response for the cancer cell to proposed chemotherapy agents." CellScan works, says Lifton, by "measuring the reaction of the cell and the death of the cell in a very efficient way," analyzing cell activity based on fluorescence intensity and polarization.
"In in vitro situations we can see whether or not that cancer cell is living or dying," says Lifton, then gauge potential responses to chemotherapies, offering patients and oncologists "some help to determine what to try to use in the chemotherapy cocktail." Lifton says CellScan can be used for cell study beyond cancer and, though it cannot be used for "mass screening for drugs," if researchers conduct "intense work with a limited number of drugs, we can help them enormously."
CellScan has already been used in studies, says Lifton, noting that clinicians atMemorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Analyst Gary Giblen, a managing director at Brean,Murray
Medis is searching for a CEO for Cell Kinetics, and Lifton, noting discussions with investment bankers, mentioned several options for financing Cell Kinetics. He says Medis shareholders will become shareholders in Cell Kinetics, though the two companies will be distinct.
With the CellScan discovery so new, Giblen says it's too early to predict market size, but characterizes it as of "enormous value. And there's no competitive technology." As a tool that will be "uniquely useful for general cancer research" and hospitals around the world, though, Giblen expects "rather huge markets," including in developing countries, because of the prevalence of cancer.
