ICN, VWR Sign Marketing Pact

COSTA MESA — ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it signed an agreement with West Chester, Pa.-based VWR Scientific Products Corp. to market and distribute ICN’s products for biomedical researchers in North America.

VWR’s sales force of 400 will focus on marketing the Costa Mesa drug firm’s 55,000 biomedical products, calling on drug companies and other private firms that do their own basic research, officials said.

Until now, ICN sold the line solely through its direct-mail catalog to academic research laboratories. The company has no sales force of its own for the products. ICN’s U.S. sales of the line amount to about $15 million to $17 million a year, said John Julian, ICN’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

VWR, a publicly held distributor of lab equipment and supplies used in life sciences, has worldwide revenue of more than $1.1 billion--twice that of ICN. Terms weren’t disclosed.