A Medical Device Daily

Advanced Cell Technology (ACT; Los Angeles) reported that it has signed a clinical trial agreement with Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center (both Chandler, Arizona), members of Catholic Healthcare West (CHW; San Francisco) to become ACT’s first clinical trial sites for the Phase II myoblast study. CHW has received Institutional Review Board approval for the trial, expected to begin soon.

The myoblast program is an autologous adult stem cell therapy for the treatment of heart disease that has successfully completed four Phase I trials and received FDA clearance to begin Phase II trials.

In November 2007, ACT and CHW said that the parties had entered a letter of intent for a proposed exclusive business arrangement to establish a clinical trial research site and a North American regenerative medicine interventional cardiology training center for the Phase II clinical trial.

The study, which will utilize 3-D Guided Catheter-Based Delivery of Autologous Skeletal Myoblasts for Ishemic Cardiomyopathy (CAuSMIC), will soon be open for enrollment. Led by principal investigator Nabil Dib, MD, director of Cardiovascular Research for Chandler Regional and Mercy Gilbert, enrollment in the CAuSMIC trial will focus on patients who are not eligible for angioplasty or coronary artery bypass surgery, and who continue to have poor quality of life despite receiving optimal medical therapy or cardiac resynchronization therapy with a pacemaker or defibrillator.

ACT is a biotech applying cellular technology in the field of regenerative medicine.

In other agreements:

• Amerinet (St. Louis) a group purchasing organization, reported an exclusive agreement with EKLA (Westchester, Illinois), calling it a historically under-utilized business, for medical surgical distribution services.

The partnership will focus on the distribution of medical surgical products and services in 10 states. This three-year agreement creates a partnership to ensure Amerinet members receive the resources to delivery high quality healthcare. EKLA offers extended hours of operation, customer service representatives, order processing and same-day, next-day and scheduled deliveries.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported that contracts for IV site management products have been awarded to Cardinal Health 200 (McGaw Park, Illinois); LSL Industries (Chicago), a minority business enterprise; and Medical Action Industries (Hauppauge, New York).

The agreements are available to acute care and continuum of care members of the Premier alliance.