A Medical Device Daily

.decimal (Sanford, Florida) reported that it has signed an agreement with ProCure Treatment Centers, (New York) to supply patient-specific devices for its proton therapy facility in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

This agreement calls for proton range compensators and apertures to be manufactured in Sanford and shipped to the facility in Oklahoma within 24 to 72 hours. Mark Mills, senior vice president of sales and marketing for .decimal, said "Signing with ProCure just further strengthens the commitment we have made to the proton therapy industry and specifically to their state-of-the-art facility in Oklahoma City."

.decimal has been supplying patient-specific medical devices, as well as other custom machining projects for the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute since June of 2007. This partnership continues to demonstrate why .decimal, Inc. is the industry leader in partnering with proton therapy facilities worldwide.

With the addition of the facility in Oklahoma, .decimal will continue to develop new and innovative technologies which will increase patient throughput while providing high-quality devices to the patients in Oklahoma City.

.decimal is a manufacturer of patient-specific devices, including missing tissue compensators, modulators for advanced Compensator-Based IMRT delivery, as well as apertures and range compensators used in proton therapy. The company has been providing radiation therapy products for over 20 years.

In other agreements/contracts:

• Mirna Therapeutics (San Francisco), a wholly owned subsidiary of Asuragen (Austin, Texas), and the University of California, San Francisco reported that they have entered into a collaboration agreement to evaluate the capacity of specific microRNAs to reduce or eliminate tumors in mouse models of cancer. The collaboration will include studies of cancer-related microRNAs that were discovered at both Mirna and UCSF as well as small RNAs that will be identified in research using mouse and cell models from UCSF.

"miRNAs are exciting new therapeutic targets for cancer therapy. Our collaboration with Mirna will allow us to identify potentially novel tumor-associated miRNAs using genetically-defined cancer model systems," said Andrei Goga, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor at UCSF and Member of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center.

• Perceptive Informatics (Boston) an eClinical solutions provider and a subsidiary of Parexel International (Waltham, Massachusetts), reported it has established an alliance with AG Mednet (Boston) a global diagnostic imaging network, to bring greater efficiency to the electronic transport of medical images and a higher level of quality to imaging data. Medical imaging data collected globally from clinical sites will be delivered to Perceptive Informatics through AG Mednet's secure, web-enabled network.

Through a more efficient image acquisition and collection process, which eliminates medical image file shipments, Perceptive's alliance with AG Mednet is focused on helping sponsors to realize cost savings. Perceptive said that due to the high image quality available through AG Mednet's digital delivery system, it is able to help sponsors decrease the time required for image reviews since less time will be spent on queries and data reconciliation with sites.

AG Mednet, which provides the largest HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 compliant image transport and exchange network, routes a broad range of medical imaging modalities, including CT, MRI, ultrasound, PET and digital X-ray.

• Cardiac Science (Bothell, Washington) a developer of advanced cardiac diagnosis, resuscitation, rehabilitation, and informatics products, completed a three-year agreement for product design and engineering services from Syncroness (Westminister, Colorado) a design and engineering firm serving the medical devices industry.

"We expect considerable savings and speed-to-market improvements with Syncroness," said Bob Odell, VP of engineering for Cardiac Science. The agreement increases Cardiac Science's engineering capacity to manage sustaining activities and new business opportunities. Odell adds, "This will allow seasoned Cardiac Science team members to focus on new customer solutions, revenue opportunities, and new advances in technology. As a result, we'll be even faster and more responsive to market needs."

• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego) reported agreements for chest drainage products have been awarded to Atrium Medical (Hudson, New Hampshire), and Teleflex Medical (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina).

Effective March 1, the 36-month agreements are available to acute care and continuum of care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.