Conor Shareholders OK $1.4B J&J Buyout

The shareholders of Conor Medsystems of Menlo Park, CA approved Wednesday a $1.4 billion takeover of the  company by New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson.

One of the main attractions of the medical device giant was Conor Medsystems’ next-generation drug-coated stent, CoStar, which is sold outside the U.S. and is currently in U.S. clinical trials. J&J now sells the Cypher drug-coated stent, which competes with Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific’s Taxus line.

Conor Medsystems claims that the CoStar, which uses paclitaxel, is different from other drug-coated stents, in that it uses tiny reservoirs built into the stent to release the drug.

Conor shares rose 13 cents to $33.35 in electronic after-hours activity, after climbing 8 cents to close at $33.22 on the Nasdaq.