Cornerstone Buys Critical Therapeutics

Wade Roush5/2/08

Lexington, MA-based Critical Therapeutics, which owns the rights to the asthma drug Zyflo and is developing other treatments for respiratory and inflammatory diseases, said today that it will be acquired by Cary, NC-based Cornerstone BioPharma. The stock-based transaction will leave Cornerstone stockholders with 70 percent ownership of the combined company and Critical Therapeutics shareholders with 30 percent. Critical Therapeutics was founded in 2000 by University of Pittsburgh critical care physican Mitchell Fink, who later went on to found Lexington’s Logical Therapeutics; Critical went public in 2004, but has seen its stock price slide recently, leading it to promise investors late last year that it would seek a merger, according to Mass High Tech.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.