Mallinckrodt to acquire Stratatech, gaining rights to skin substitute

Ireland-incorporated specialty pharma firm Mallinckrodt (NYSE: MNK) has entered into a merger agreement with Stratatech Corp, a privately-held Wisconsin-based regenerative medicine company focused on the development of unique, proprietary skin substitute products.

Developmental products include StrataGraft regenerative skin tissue and a technology platform for genetically enhanced skin tissues. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

If approved, StrataGraft could be the first biological "off-the-shelf" skin substitute product for treatment of severe burns – Stratatech's proprietary tissue engineering technology produces living tissues designed to mimic human skin and promote tissue regeneration. The current standard of care for second- and third-degree burns requires autograft, the painful harvesting of a patient's tissue from an uninjured area to graft into another burned area. Severe burns can frequently cause extensive scarring, create multiple channels for infection risk and may result in multiple surgeries, all of which lead to hospitalizations of highly variable, unspecified length.