Live from NASS: More Acquisitions on the Horizon for Bioventus

Bioventus’ recent acquisition of the OsteoAMP product line is the “start of major growth in the surgical space,” Henry Tung, M.D. told ODT at the North American Spine Society (NASS) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. And, the head of the new Surgical Orthobiologics group of Bioventus went on to say, the company has a number of acquisitions in the surgical space planned for next year.

Acquisitions of both companies and technologies are at the core of Bioventus’ growth strategy. The Smith & Nephew spinoff, which just enjoyed its first full year fully independent of the parent company, has a vision of rapid global growth. Already present in Europe, Japan and Argentina, a new distribution agreement is set to begin in Mexico the first quarter of next year, and new partners in other key Asian regions such as Korea are being sought. Bioventus also just created a new position in the company that will be in charge of the Latin American, Canadian, and Australian markets.

“It’s been a good year for us,” Tung told ODT. “It’s the first full year for our new CEO Anthony Bihl who started in December last year. This year we had a good strategic refresh and affirmation of where Bioventus is going.”

The Durham, N.C.-based company is also positioning itself as a company driven by excellent data and scientific evidence. One of the reasons the company was attracted to OsteoAMP, Tung said, was the good and growing body of evidence behind the bone biologic product that showed its clinical efficacy, making it a “credible and efficacious product.” At NASS, the company announced a program to raise up to $10,000 for research on spine-related disabilities, an initiative in line with its vision for better research in the orthobiologics space. For each clinician member of NASS that visits the Bioventus booth, the company will donate $100 to the NASS Annual Research Fund as an unrestricted grant.

“Research is at the heart of what we believe will bring products to the marketplace,” Tung said. “We want to encourage that and that’s why we want to support research and work with societies like NASS to can fund more research. So we’ll help them with their funding of research, and we fund quite a bit of our own research. It’s an important component of how we believe we will succeed as a company.”

NASS attendees can visit Bioventus at booth #419 at the Moscone Center from Nov. 12-15.