A Medical Device Daily

Wound Care Innovations (Fort Worth, Texas) reported that it has entered into an agreement with Quad Xenos Partners (Washington) to market and distribute its advanced wound care collagen product, CellerateRx, to U.S. government agencies.

Quad Xenos Partners is a Service Disabled Veteran-Owned small business, a program that provides expertise and federally mandated leverage to small- and mid-sized companies seeking to sell their products and services into the federal government.

"We are excited about the opportunities presented by this relationship," said Cathy Bradshaw, president of Wound Care Innovations. "It will enable us to facilitate government sales in the many inpatient and outpatient VA centers around the country as well as the other government agencies."

CellerateRx is FDA-cleared as a medical device and is indicated for all acute and chronic wounds except for third-degree burns.

"QX Partners is ... pleased to team with Wound Care Innovations, as this marks both companies' escalated engagement of the federal government Veterans Affairs hospitals in particular," said company President Alan McCain.

"We strongly believe that the combination of a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business focused on selling the products of another small business is the best economic stimulus package possible," he said. "VA doctors have long requested CellerateRx to expedite wound care, and now they can buy it in greater quantities from fellow veterans."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Q-Med (Uppsala, Sweden) and Oceana Therapeutics (Edison, New Jersey) have reported entering into definitive agreements to license worldwide commercialization rights to Deflux and Solesta.

The agreements also include future products that use Q-Med's NASHA technology. As part of the transaction, Oceana Therapeutics is acquiring Q-Med Scandinavia, which accounts for the majority of the business for Deflux and Solesta.

Included in this transaction are the exclusive rights to market, sell and distribute Deflux and Solesta and other products intended for the management of urological and gastroenterological conditions worldwide.

Q-Med will continue to develop and manufacture all products under this agreement, while Oceana will focus on continued global commercialization of Deflux and Solesta.

Oceana will make an initial payment of $60 million for the shares of Q-Med Scandinavia and an additional payment of $15 million upon the U.S. approval of Solesta.

If certain sales targets are achieved, Q-Med AB may receive additional milestone payments of up to $45 million. Oceana also will pay a royalty for the licensing rights based on the net sales of the products. The parties will share the clinical development cost for Solesta.

• Misonix (Farmingdale, New York), a developer of minimally invasive ultrasonic medical device technology, which in Europe is used for the ablation of tumors and worldwide for other acute health conditions, has entered into a five-year distribution agreement with DTL Medical (Craiova, Romania).

DTL will market the Sonablate 500 High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) System as a mobile, fee-for-use service to hospitals in Romania and Bulgaria. Misonix and DTL will share the fee-for-use revenue for the length of the agreement plus any extension periods.

• Schwartz Communications (Waltham, Massachusetts) reported the continued growth of its government relations practice with the addition of five new clients. With the Obama administration focused on healthcare information technology and renewable and green energy, companies in these markets have selected Schwartz to help guide them through the legislative and administrative process for seeking federal dollars. Additionally, Schwartz has been tasked with raising each client's profile among decision-makers in Washington, and helping shape public policy decisions.

New government relations clients in the healthcare IT market include Logical Images (Rochester, New York), SurIDx and Medsphere Systems (Carlsbad, California).

• InteRNA Technologies (Bilthoven, the Netherlands) and Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) have entered into a research agreement to develop microRNA (miRNA)-based therapeutics for prostate cancer.

Under the research collaboration with Professor Jack Schalken of the university's Laboratory of Experimental Urology, InteRNA's lentiviral-based miRNA overexpression library will be applied in multi-parametric, high-throughput functional screening assays to identify the biological role of individual miRNAs and novel therapeutic targets in prostate cancer.

"We are very excited about this collaboration with Professor Schalken, a renowned investigator in the prostate cancer field, as it allows for functional screens in diverse cell based assays embedded in a lab with extensive knowledge of prostate cancer," said Roel Schaapveld, COO of InteRNA Technologies.