• Clear Innova (Los Angeles) reported the launch of a radiology information system (RIS) that it says will serve as an efficient, cost-effective practice management solution for imaging centers and hospital radiology departments. The Origin RIS integrates a number of key features and capabilities that typically require the piecing together of separate products. The system's unified platform handles patient scheduling, maintains electronic medical records including documents, forms, dictation, and images and provides a comprehensive billing module with a "Code Suggester" for faster and more efficient billing and payments.

• Fluidigm (South San Francisco, California) said that its Topaz system is the tool that has helped researchers solve the structures of proteins from the Ebola Virus and Avian Flu Influenza. Now, the company is introducing its new 1.96 Diffraction Capable (DC) integrated fluidic circuit which it says will allow researchers something they have long sought – direct screen-to-beam capabilities without the need to physically harvest a crystal from the device. The Topaz system samples crystallization space while using little protein sample. These microscopic crystals can hold the key to understanding and possibly preventing diseases of catastrophic proportions, such as influenza epidemics. The 1.96 DC chip provides the ability to obtain high quality in situ, diffraction data, thus allowing true "hands off" diffraction-based screening.

• Luminex (Austin, Texas) reported the release of its Flexmap 3D system, a multiplexing instrument that allows scientists to simultaneously perform up to 500 tests on a single sample. Based on Luminex's xMAP Technology, Flexmap 3D provides scientists with up to 500 analytes per well, improved analytical performance, 96- or 384-well plate format, enhanced dual pipetting, automation and LIS compatibility, streamlined calibration and performance verification routines. Luminex claims that the Flexmap 3D can perform multiplexed genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic biomarker analysis on a single platform. It is ideal for applications such as SNP genotyping and gene expression analysis, which are vital in areas such as high throughput pharmaceutical research.

• Medifocus (Vancouver, British Columbia) said that it has filed an IDE application with the FDA to obtain clearance to initiate a pivotal Phase III clinical trial using the company's Microfocus APA 1000 System for the treatment of breast cancer in the U.S. and worldwide. The clinical trial is designed to assess the safety and improvement in efficacy, as measured by increased tumor shrinkage, of using focused microwave heat energy delivered by the Microfocus APA 1000 system in combination with neo-adjuvant chemotherapy on large breast cancer tumors. The company's APA system can precisely target and concentrate microwave energy to destroy cancer tumors without damaging healthy tissue when used alone or in conjunction with chemotherapy or radiation. The ability to target tumors with a precision controlled dose of heat can be used to destroy tumors at higher temperatures, to treat tumors in combination with chemotherapy and/or radiation at moderate temperatures for increased effectiveness over those treatments alone.

• Medtronic (Minneapolis) reported results from a study show that the Talent Abdominal Stent Graft demonstrated durable safety and effectiveness in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms, despite having included patients with more challenging anatomies than comparable trials of similar medical devices. The Talent AAA study's effectiveness endpoint assessed successful aneurysm treatment, defined as technical success with device placement, as well as freedom from aneurysm growth greater than 5 mm and freedom from Type I or III endoleak, at one year.

• Quest Diagnostics (Madison, New Jersey) reported the availability of a new laboratory developed test designed to help physicians determine whether a patient with a history of HIV drug resistance will respond to the latest class of HIV antiretroviral therapies. The HIV-1 Coreceptor Tropism Test provides physicians with timely information so they may more quickly determine or change therapy based on how the HIV virus infects cells in the individual patient. HIV coreceptor tropism refers to the preference of strains of HIV to bind to, activate and infect cells, promoting disease progression, based on the type of co-receptor on the cell's surface. The newest class of antiretroviral drugs, called entry inhibitors, targets the tropism process involving one or both coreceptors, CCR5 or CXCR4, of CD4 cells, which help the immune system fight infection. HIV-1 viral particles that use the CCR5 co-receptor to infect the cell are called R5-tropic, those using CXCR4 are called X4-tropic, and those using both are called dual-tropic.