A Medical Device Daily

Biomagnetics Diagnostics (BD; San Francisco) discussed the company's acquisition of intellectual property rights from Los Alamos National Security (Los Alamos, New Mexico) and how it plans to use it for the development of a handheld integrated optical biosensor capable of highly accurate and rapid HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other pathogen detection and disease diagnosis.

BD reported last month that it had a finalized a patent license agreement with Los Alamos National Security. Under that agreement, Biomagnetics will have access to the Triggered Optical Biosensor and Integrated Optical Biosensor System (IBOS) technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The agreement was recently enhanced to include the intellectual property for "Quantitative Multiplex Detection of Pathogen Biomarkers," which was recently protected through a U.S. patent application filed in October.

When used with the IBOS, it is capable of detecting multiple pathogens from a single blood sample. BD plans to integrate these technologies into a handheld blood diagnostic device that can be utilized by relatively unskilled personnel to screen potential blood donors for various pathogens at the point of collection.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• The National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, Maryland) has awarded a $55.4 million, multiple-year contract to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle) to become the nation's sole operator of its Cancer Information Service Contact Center. The move will create 60 new jobs at the Hutchinson Center, nearly tripling the size of its current CIS workforce, once the consolidated center is fully operational, which is scheduled for March 15, 2010. The Seattle CIS center will remain in its existing location on the Hutchinson Center campus.

The CIS is a free public telephone and Internet-based resource for personalized information about cancer prevention, screening and treatment. The Hutchinson Center has operated a CIS contact center since 1981.

• Dynatronics (Salt Lake City) has signed a sole-source vendor agreement to provide therapy equipment and rehab supplies to Benchmark Physical Therapy (Ooltewah, Tennessee) with 65 clinics located in Tennessee and Georgia. Dynatronics has been actively seeking contracts with large chains of clinics, hospitals and group purchasing organizations.

• Steris (Mentor, Ohio) and NeoForce Group (Ivyland, Pennsylvania) have agreed to jointly market the world's first surgical system designed just for newborn babies. The system is made up of NeoForce's neonatal surgical table, and lighting, visualization and connectivity technology from Steris, and it's designed to be located near fragile babies, rather than transport the babies to a modified operating room for adults.

In 2008, NeoForce started working with University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital (Cleveland) to design a surgical table system that would meet the needs of surgeons who operate on newborns. Steris was called into the project to integrate lighting, visualization and connectivity technologies with the table.

"As we developed our Rainbow Flex surgical table, we had to assure that our designs would harmonize with the other devices in the [operating room]," Otho Boone, president of NeoForce, said. "Steris caught our attention with their superior lighting, integration and casework solutions."