Archives for September 2007
Imalux Closes $5.1 Million Series C Financing
Imalux, a Cleveland, OH-based firm specializing in imaging technology, has closed a Series C round of $5.1 million, including conversion of $2.5 million of bridge financing.
The funding — for which lead investors Early Stage Partners, ElectroSonics Medical, Reservoir Venture Partners, and Symark were joined by more than 20 existing and new investors — will be used to advance Imalux’s Niris Imaging System.
The Niris System, FDA approved since 2004, is a point-of-care, desktop computer-sized device that allows physicians to view abnormal tissues in real-time. It uses near infrared light and a miniaturized lateral scanning mechanism inside a thin probe to image multiple scattering soft and hard tissues. Niris visualizes microstructure within two millimeters deep, which is where many diagnostically important tissue alterations occur.
“The new funding enables the company to fully implement our well planned clinical validation of the Niris Imaging System,”
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Fall Med Tech Investment Digest Covers 200 Firms
The now-available fall issue of Medical Technology Investment Digest, OneMedPlace’s quarterly membership publication, covers nearly 200 emerging medical technology companies.
These firms hail from a variety of regions, but the issue pays extra attention to St. Louis, MO, in a special regional focus on the city’s life sciences industry. The focus contains a feature article on St. Louis’ economic development, interviews with local executives, profiles of med tech companies, and a list of 50 additional firms located in and around St. Louis.
Clinically, the issue looks closely at urology, in a sector spotlight that includes 110 companies working in the space — including five that are explored in full-blown profiles — and interviews with executives and physicians.
Finally, MTID reports on AdvaMed 2007, an event being held October 1-3 in Washington, DC. The conference was created, in part, to improve partnering and networking opportunities
Cardiosolutions to Use Series A Cash for Pilot Trial
Cardiosolutions, of Stoughton, MA, has closed a $7 million Series A financing, led by BioVentures Investors. The funding will go toward pilot human trials of the company’s minimally invasive system for repairing mitral regurgitation.
Mitral regurgitation is the most common type of heart-valve insufficiency. It is a long-term disorder in which the valve that separates the left upper chamber of the heart (atrium) from the left lower chamber (ventricle) does not close properly. Debilitating, chronic mitral regurgitation affects approximately 6% of women and 3% of men and currently requires open-heart surgery for restoration of valve function.
Cardiosolution’s Spacer-Tek Technology utilizes minimally invasive techniques similar to coronary stenting and mitral valvuloplasty. The company’s Percu-Pro System measures the pumping chambers of the heart and then delivers a proprietary Mitra-Spacer to the affected valve through a series of small catheters that are threaded into the
ISTO Gets 501(k) Clearance for Bone-Graft Technology
ISTO Technologies, a St. Louis, MO-based orthobiologics company, has received 501(k) clearance for its InQu bone-grafting technology. FDA has cleared the technology for use as an extender in the spine and as a bone-graft substitute in the extremities and pelvis.
InQu represents a new class of synthetic biomaterial scaffold designed to optimize structural and biological properties to support bone cell growth. It’s is a biopolymer composite of hyaluronic acid which is entangled within the three-dimensional backbone created by synthetic polyester. Hyaluronic acid, a ubiquitous component of natural tissue, is known to play a predominant role in tissue morphogenesis, cell migration, adhesion, and cell differentiation.
More than one million bone-grafting procedures are performed in the U.S. each year, and more than three million worldwide. Synthetic bone-graft material represents the fastest-growing segment of the orthobiologics market.
ISTO plans to launch InQu at the North American
Chembio Awarded NIH Grant for Leptospirosis Test
Chembio Diagnostics, of Medford, NY, has been awarded a $286,000 Small Business Innovative Research Phase I grant ffrom the National Institutes of Health to develop a rapid seriodiagnostic test for leptospirosis, an emerging infectious disease in the U.S.
The test — which will be developed in collaboration with Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, the largest research institution in Latin America — will be based on Chembio’s Dual Path Platform (DPP) technology, for which it was awarded a U.S. patent in March.
DPP is a lateral flow technology that employs separate membrane strips for sample migration and test reagents. The design allows for complete control and management of the sample flow, and as a result, the immunological reaction is much more efficient than conventional single path lateral flow (SPLF) tests. These features
Pittsburgh Welcomes Coventina with $150K
Coventina Healthcare Enterprises, a South Park, PA, firm specializing in therapeutic warming devices, has received $150,000 from The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG), an organization founded in 2001 to grow southwestern Pennsylvania’s life sciences industry.
Coventina recently relocated to the region after acquiring the assets of a Texan company, SeliCor, with an established presence in southwestern Pennsylvania. The most important asset was the SeliTherm System, an FDA-cleared therapeutic warming device with a number of applications, including muscle healing, wound healing, osteoarthritis treatment, pain management, and re-warming of hypothermia victims.
SeliTherm consists of a radio frequency generator and a family of form-fitting garments with helically coiled wires that deliver gentle, deep heating along the body. The process is extremely low-risk and eliminates the need for attended care.
Therapeutic warming means raising the temperature of the tissues 1.0-to-1.6 inches below the surface of the skin
AdvanDx Pulls in $15 Million in Series C Funding
AdvanDx, a Woburn, MA, molecular diagnostic company, has closed a $15 million Series C financing from new and existing investors. The five-year-old private company will use the money to accelerate commercialization of its molecular-based, in vitro diagnostic tests for infectious diseases.
AdvaDx’s two main tests are PNA FISH and EVIGENE. Both provide rapid identification results (available in hours instead of days) for bacteria and yeast to support appropriate antibiotic therapy.
PNA FISH, for which AdvaDx in May signed an exclusive licensing agreement with French diagnostics firm bioMérieux, uses fluorescent-labeled peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes in a highly sensitive and specific 2.5 hours fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assay targeting the species-specific ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in microbes. The technology allows for rapid and accurate identification of bacteria and yeast directly from positive blood cultures. It is available for in vitro diagnostic use in the U.S.,
CardioDynamics Sets Plan for Profitability
Two weeks after completing the $8 million sale of its Vermed business unit, San Diego-based CardioDynamics has announced a plan to accelerate its return to profitability. The company, which uses impedance cardiography (ICG) technology to monitor the heart’s ability to deliver blood to the body, has invested in revenue-growth initiatives and expense reductions, including a 10% reduction in executive salaries.
The decision to sell Vermed, announced in June, was based on declining margins and profits in the electrocardiogram business — Vermed supplies disposable electrodes and related supplies for electrocardiograph — and on CardioDynamics’ desire to focus exclusively on its ICG business and BioZ product line. BioZ diagnostics, modules and monitors measure blood as it enters and leaves the heart, and look at changes in impedance to calculate hemodynamic parameters. It’s a non-invasive alternative to pulmonary artery catheterization, a costly and time-consuming procedure.
CardioDynamics has named
Texas Instruments Invests $15 Million in Med Tech
Technology behemoth Texas Instruments has allocated $15 million to fund medical-technology research at select universities. The money will support R&D of emerging medical technologies over a period of several years, across a variety of areas, including personal medical devices, implantables, medical imaging, wireless healthcare systems and biosensor technology.
Texas Instruments’ technology is currently being used throughout the medical field, in such areas as portable imaging, wireless communications for patient monitoring, retinal prosthesis and DSP-based robotics for amputees. The company’s expertise in semiconductor technologies — high-performance analog, digital signal processing, ultra-low-power microcontrollers, wireless connectivity and DLP(R) — make it a viable player in the development of new medical devices.
“In the 1990s, wireless communications systems, cell phones and PDAs were major areas of R&D and leading market drivers in the electronics industry,” said Kent Novak, vice president of Texas Instruments’ medical business unit,
