Ovation gained control of the only two drugs that treat premature babies' heart defects, then raised the cost of treatment nearly 1,300 percent, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday in a lawsuit that accused Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc. of violating antitrust laws. The FTC said Ovation engineered an unlawful acquisition when it acquired the drug NeoProfen in January 2006 from Abbott Laboratories, knowing it was buying the only rival to a drug it bought just one year earlier. Ovation already held the rights to Indocin I.V., a drug developed by Merck & Co.
 

"To achieve its dominant position, Ovation monopolized the market and bought its most imminent threat," FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz said. "The course of treatment rose from about $108 in 2005, before the transaction at issue, to about $1,500 today. Ovation's profiteering on the backs of critically ill premature babies is not only immoral, it is illegal." As soon as it acquired NeoProfen, Ovation raised the $36 price it had been charging hospitals for each vial of Indocin to about $500, the FTC alleged in its complaint. Ovation set a price of $483 a vial for NeoProfen when it started selling the drug in July 2006, the FTC said.
 

Ovation specializes in drugs for rare medical conditions, including a heart defect, known by its acronym PDA that affects babies born prematurely. If not treated, the condition can prove fatal. Some 30,000 newborns a year in the U.S. go on a drug for the condition. The two drugs are the only alternative to risky surgery to treat it, also known as patent ductus arteriosus in which a blood vessel connecting two heart arteries fails to close.
 

"Ovation's acquisition of NeoProfen substantially reduced competition and illegally maintained Ovation's monopoly in drug treatments for PDA, depriving consumers of the benefits of competition and the lower prices such competition would bring," the FTC alleged in the suit.
 

The agency sued in federal court in Minnesota to force privately held Ovation to sell one of the drugs and repay to purchasers "all unlawfully obtained profits" from the drug monopoly dating to 2006. Jeffrey Aronin, chief executive of Ovation, was unavailable for an interview Tuesday. In a statement, Ovation said it "strongly disputes the claims" in the FTC's complaint and believes the allegations are "without merit."