A Medical Device Daily

Ardiem Medical (Indiana, Pennsylvania) says it has obtained a non-exclusive license to make and sell neuromodulation devices based on intellectual property developed at Case Western Reserve University's (CWRU; Cleveland) Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center.

The FES Center seeks restoring function for people with disabilities. The agreement grants Ardiem rights to intramuscular recording and stimulating electrodes, epimysysial recording and stimulating electrodes, spiral cuff peripheral nerve electrodes, and a universal external control unit.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

The technologies, first developed for internal research at CWRU and the FES Center, will now be directly available through Ardiem to other researchers working in the neuoromodulation field, the company said.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Circadence (Boulder, Colorado) said that CereScan (Denver), a brain imaging company focused on brain disorders and traumatic injuries, selected Circadence's WARP WAN Optimization to deliver ultra-secure, high speed transfers of its high definition functional brain images between its imaging centers, reading physicians and the company's data center in Denver.

According to the company, Circadence's WARP WAN Optimization platform provides significant data acceleration benefits over the wide area network and can increase the speed of CereScan's high definition data transfers from 100% to 1000% on any network, mobile, or remote location connection. WARP WAN Optimization is military-grade secure and fully HIPAA-compliant, the company noted.

CereScan's images are used for clinical and research applications related to brain-based disorders, such as traumatic brain injury, post traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety and depression.

• ERYtech Pharma (Lyon, France and Philadelphia) reported a collaborative research agreement with M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) in the field of personalized medicine focusing on its flagship product, GRASPA, which consists of red blood cell-encapsulated L-asparaginase (L-ASP).

"L-ASP is a standard component of leukemia chemotherapy regimens, but it's not used yet against solid tumors due to erratic activity. We've identified a candidate biomarker, asparagine synthetase (ASNS) that may predict L-ASP activity against solid tumors," said John Weinstein, chair of the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at M.D. Anderson and principal investigator of the project.

• Stematix (Houston), a regenerative medicine delivery company, said it has entered into a 10-year exclusive agreement with Laboratorios Bag (Buenos Aires, Argentina), a medical products company. Laboratorios Bag will distribute a variety of Stematix orthopedic and cellular products for use in regenerative and related medical treatments. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed, but the contract also provides the option of additional forms of joint collaboration in clinical trials and treatments.

• Connectyx Technologies (Palm City, Florida) said it is sponsoring a research project with the University of Florida (Gainesville) to document the effectiveness of using an electronic Personal Health Record (ePHR) in a medically underserved population.

"We believe that the research will document a measurable improvement in a patient's compliance, overall health and clinical outcomes in multiple aspects of healthcare. From the patients' understanding of physicians' instructions to improved continuity of care between interacting physicians, there should be clear benefits for those patients equipped with MedFlash," said Ronn Schuman, CEO of Connectyx.

• Pacific Biosciences (Menlo Park, California) a company developing a technology platform for real-time detection of biological events at single molecule resolution, reported the launch of a partner program designed to work with organizations providing complementary solutions to its Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT) DNA sequencing system. The program will help customers rapidly and easily adopt its third-generation DNA sequencing solution into their discovery programs, the company said.

"We have thought carefully about what it takes to successfully introduce a new generation of technology to the marketplace, and putting in place an entire ecosystem of complementary solutions has been one of our strategies from the beginning," said Hugh Martin, CEO/chairman of Pacific Biosciences. "The overwhelming response from companies wanting to partner with us is extremely validating as we stand on the verge of introducing a breakthrough technology to redefine DNA sequencing. We look forward to continuing to champion collaboration in the industry."

Pacific says it has created an open and extensible system in order to encourage innovation across the industry. To support a whole product solution with the commercial launch of the SMRT system in the second half of 2010, the company said it has developed a formal partner program designed for companies providing consumables, automation systems, complementary instrumentation, services, and supporting software and hardware.

Members of the partner program will receive access to information and development tools, APIs, protocols, and potential co-marketing opportunities depending on the specific terms of the partnership. In some cases, Pacific Biosciences will engage in co-development agreements to bring complementary solutions to market, the company said.

• Spectra Laboratories East (Rockleigh, New Jersey), a lab division of Fresenius Medical Care North America (Waltham, Massachusetts), said it recently replaced its legacy system with McKesson's (Atlanta) Horizon Lab laboratory information system to improve workflow associated with more than 30 million tests it performs annually.