165 jobs are to be lost at US healthcare company Conor Medsystems in Athlone, Co Westmeath.

The US company is located in the IDA Industrial Estate on the Dublin Road in the town.

The company has terminated tests for its coronary stent CoStar. It said last week that the stent had failed to meet targets and it would not be asking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review its position.

Conor Medsystems, LLC, which was founded in 1999, is a developer of innovative controlled vascular drug delivery technologies. Conor has initially focused on the development of stents to treat coronary artery disease. Conor was seeking to capitalize on the full therapeutic potential of drug-eluting stents through the development of a stent specifically designed for drug delivery. Rather than retrofitting a bare metal stent with a drug coating, Conor's stent design incorporated hundreds of small holes, each acting as a reservoir into which drug-polymer compositions can be loaded.

Through this proprietary design, Conor believed that it would greatly enhance control of the rate and direction of drug delivery, enable a wider range of drug therapies and potentially increase the effectiveness and range of clinical applications of drug-eluting stents.

Through a merger completed on February 1, 2007, Conor Medsystems, LLC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, the world's most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of healthcare products.