The boomlet in biotech deals continued with three more in the first half of the month.

On Feb. 9 H. Lundbeck A/S agreed to acquire Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $900 million in cash. The Copenhagen-based buyer used a Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP team led by M&A partner Steve Navarro and Randall Sunberg, who heads Morgan Lewis' life sciences practice and landed the client several years ago after it completed the $120 million acquisition of Synaptic Pharmaceutical Corp. in a bid to increase its U.S. presence. David Levin, Darren Campili, Wilder Fulford and Andrew Callaway at Deutsche Bank AG provided banking advice.

Ovation tapped Kevin Morris, Sanford Perl and Michael Weed at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, longtime counsel to GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, which owns the Deerfield, Ill., biotech company, and Eric Smith and Herbert Wander at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. Ovation's general counsel Patrick Morris was a partner at GTCR before joining the company in 2003. GTCR and Ovation used Jason Haas, Peter van der Goes and Matt Korenberg at Goldman, Sachs & Co. for banking advice.

Morgan Lewis was also on a smaller biotech deal announced the previous week. Denis Segota and Emilio Ragosa of the firm's Princeton, N.J., office represented PharmaNet Development Group Inc. on its $244 million sale to JLL Partners Inc. Morgan Lewis had represented the Princeton target since its current management team took over in 2006. PharmaNet's board turned to Charles Nathan and David Kurzweil at Latham & Watkins LLP in New York. The company tapped Michael Gerardi and Marc Anthony Hourihan of UBS for banking advice. JLL turned to Steven Daniels in the Wilmington, Del., office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, which is the New York PE shop's regular outside counsel.

Latham notched its second biotech deal of the month on Feb. 13 when Orange County partner Charles Ruck represented Thoratec Corp. on its $282 million cash and stock acquisition of HeartWare International Inc. The buyer used Joe Kohls of Banc of America Securities LLC for banking advice.

HeartWare tapped Robert Katz and Clare O'Brien at Shearman & Sterling LLP. HeartWare CEO Douglas Godshall joined the company in 2006 from Boston Scientific Corp., a longtime Shearman client that used the firm on its takeover of Guidant Corp. On the banking side, HeartWare turned to Jeff Hoffman and Philippe McAuliffe of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.