Archives for April 2007
Product Placement Produces High ROI
Small medical device firms don’t spend much time worrying about advertising. When working within tight budget constraints, a 30-second spot is a luxury most emerging firms can’t afford. But product placement may be an opportunity for smaller companies to get their products in front of a consumer audience – without breaking the bank.
Washington CEO magazine today has an article about three Seattle-area firms that have landed their products on Grey’s Anatomy and ER through barter deals with television networks. Philips Medical Systems, Cardiac Science and SonoSite have seen their devices appear on one or both shows and have paid nothing for the honor. “These relationships are basically win-win because these productions need the props, and this helps us to build awareness of our brand,” Philips’s North American CEO Brent Shafer tells Washington CEO. He says it would cost between $7 million and $8 million to buy the equivalent amount of air
Accuray and CyberHeart Cut a Deal
Accuray, of Sunnyvale, CA, and Menlo Park, CA-based CyberHeart have inked a deal by which CyberHeart will use Accuray’s technology to develop a non-invasive method for performing cardiac ablation. Long-term visions for the developed technology also include applications to treat atrial fibrillation.
Cardiac ablation, used to destroy a small portion of the heart that is causing abnormal rhythms, is currently performed an an open-heart or catheter-based procedure. CyberHeart seeks to develop a non-invasive way of creating the lesions that interfere with abnormal cardiac conduction. To do it, the company will use Accuray’s CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System, which autonomously tracks, detects and corrects for tumor and patient movement in real-time during a procedure, enabling delivery of precise, high-dose radiation typically with sub-millimeter accuracy. The CyberKnife combines continuous image-guidance technology with a compact linear accelerator that has the flexibility to move in three dimensions according to the treatment
Greatbatch to Buy Enpath for $102 Million
Greatbatch, of Clarence, NY, said today that it would acquire Minneapolis-based Enpath Medical for $102 million. The purchase, which includes assumption of debt (about $5.5 million worth, according to the Associate Press), gives Greatbatch an increased presence in the cardiac rhythm management and neurostimulation markets.
Enpath’s main product lines include the following: Venous vessel introducers and valved introducers that enable physicians to create a conduit through which they can insert infusion catheters, implantable ports and pacemaker leads into a blood vessel; advanced delivery catheters that can be manipulated so that doctors can access parts of the patient’s anatomy that cannot be reached by traditional introducers; and implantable stimulation leads, adaptors and delivery systems for the cardiac and neuromodulation markets.
Banc of America Securities and Greene Holcomb & Fisher, respectively, are acting as lead advisors to Greatbatch and Enpath.
NFL Stars Back New Supplement Delivery System
HealthSport, an Amherst, NY-based company that makes an edible film strip delivery system for nutritional supplements, has raised $3 million in a private placement. 
The money, part of which came from three National Football League stars turned investors — Bruce Smith and Jim Kelly, formerly of the Buffalo Bills, and Bernie Kosar, an ex-Cleveland Brown — will be used to commercialize the firm’s Enlyten SportStrips. The strips replace the electrolytes the body loses while exercising through buccal (cheek to gum) absorption. This mode of absorption differs from other electrolyte delivery predecessors because gastric absorption is bypassed and the electrolytes are directly absorbed into the body. HealthSport says the SportStrips also help to avoid the over-hydration that can occur with excessive consumption of sports drinks.
New Eye Mask for Growing Blepharoplasty Market
BioElectronics Corporation, a Frederick, MD-based company that makes anti-inflammatory patches to accelerate healing after surgery, has come out with a new eye mask to hold in place its ActiPatch therapy on patients who have had eyelid surgery. The mask, made of a soft, breathable fabric, has a pocket on each side that holds a crescent shaped ActiPatch to assure proper placement over each eye. ActiPatch is a drug-free anti-inflammatory patch with an embedded battery operated microchip that delivers continuous pulsed therapy. It has been clinically proven to reduce swelling and bruising up to 50%.
Market potential for eyelid-surgery recovery devices is promising. Known as blepharoplasty, this kind of surgery is a cosmetic procedure that removes fat deposits, excess tissue, or muscle from the eyelids to improve the appearance of the eyes. More than 1.8 million surgical cosmetic procedures were performed in 2006, up 2
Coherex Closing in on NMT and AGA in PFO Market
Red Herring yesterday ran an article about a three-way race to develop an FDA-approved PFO closure device. In the running are Coherex Medical, NMT Medical and AGA Medical. A PFO, or patent foramen ovale, is an opening in the upper chambers of the heart. All infants are born with foramen ovales, but the opening is supposed to naturally close within one year. For 25% of people, though, that doesn’t happen, putting them at heightened risk for stroke and migraines.
NMT and AGA have trials underway for their PFO devices. And privately held Coherex is on its way: The firm announced on April 18 that it completed a Series A equity financing of $8.5 million, led by Oxford Bioscience and vSpring Capital. With the money, Coherex will pay for trials and ongoing R&D of its FlatStent Closure System. This video does a nice job of explaining how it works.
And here’s one that
Westaim Management to Look at ‘Strategic Alternatives’
Reeling from its weakened share price, Westaim Corporation, a Canadian company that makes wound care and pharmaceutical products from nanotechnology, is taking a closer look at its business strategy. In light of unimpressive stock performance — Westaim has been trading at less than $1, down from more than $5 one year ago — the company’s board has directed management to come up with some ”strategic alternatives” that’ll start delivering value to shareholders STAT. The kick in the pants likely came in the form of a Nasdaq Staff Deficiency Letter, which Westaim received on April 10. The letter advised the firm that for 30 consecutive business days, the bid price of its stock had closed below the minimum $1 per share requirement.
So far, Westaim has identified two kinks in its armor: iFire Technology and Nucryst Pharmaceuticals. The former, a subsidiary of Westaim that makes flat panel display technology, has been experiencing development delays. And
High Hopes for New Prostate-Cancer Test
Results released today from a study of a new test for prostate cancer have raised spirits in the medical community and at the private Seattle firm that discovered it.
Onconome’s blood test measures EPCA-2 (Early Prostate Cancer Antigen), a newly discovered blood protein that when elevated, appears to indicate the presence of prostate cancer. In this latest study, published in Urology, Onconome’s test correctly identified 94 percent of men with prostate cancer and 97 percent without. By way of contrast, with PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tests, the current standard detection method, 80 percent of patients with elevated PSA levels do not have prostate cancer and 15 percent of patients with normal PSA levels do. Despite this, nearly 1.7 million prostate biopsies are performed each year based primarily on results from PSA testing.
“It could allow us to help patients decide if they need a biopsy or if it’s
AFP Captures Italian Firm’s 3-D Imaging Device
AFP Imaging Corporation, of Elmsford, NY, has successfully completed the acquisition of Quantitative Radiology (QR), an Italian firm for which AFP has been the exclusive North American distributor for the past year. Most notably, with the acquisition comes QR’s principal product, a digital x-ray device that builds three dimensional images from captured data. Primary users of the device, called NewTom3G, include dentists, implantologists, oral surgeons, orthodontists and dental radiologists, as well as ear, nose and throat doctors. Currently, there are about 500 installed units in dental and medical offices around the world. And a new NewTom model is on the way: the Vertical Generation, which allows patients to stand, sit or be in a wheel chair while being scanned.
Yulex Expands Beyond Surgical Gloves
The latest issue of Fast Company has a profile of Yulex Corporation, a Carlsbad, CA, company known for making latex products that are safe for people with tropical latex allergies. Since being founded in 1997, the company’s bread and butter has been surgical gloves and condoms. But, the firm is now using its version of latex, dervied from a native Southwestern plant called guayule, to broaden its medical-product portfolio. With guayle production in high gear, Yulex plans to start making catheters and angioplasty balloons. “In this market,” says Fast Company,”guayule’s nonallergenic qualities merit a premium over Hevea [the tropical rubber used in regular latex], while its greater elasticity and lower resistance make it a better choice than similarly priced synthetics.” Yulex’s R&D team also is using its proprietary latex to develop adhesives. CEO Jeff Martin tells the magazine, “Our model is not to replace Hevea. It’s to capture the share
