•Astro-Med (West Warwick, Rhode Island) said that its Grass Technologies Product Group has received FDA clearance to sell its Neurotrac III neuromonitoring software system. Grass Neurotrac III software received clearance for the intended use of recording the electroencephalogram (EEG) and the computed EEG trends over extended periods of time so that trained health care professionals can observe long-term changes. The company will now begin to sell this existing product for new applications in continuous EEG monitoring. In addition to displaying and recording the traditional EEG waveforms, the Neurotrac III software also computes and displays graphical trends of EEG features such as amplitude integrated EEG trend, frequency trends, and Burst-Suppression Patter trends which aid the physician in identifying changes in brain function over time.

•CeloNova BioSciences (Newnam, Georgia) said that it has received FDA clearance for Embozene color-advanced microspheres which are indicated for the treatment of hypervascularized tumors (tumors with a large number of blood vessels in many locations) and arteriovenous malformations (defects in the circulatory system). U.S. commercial sales of Embozene Microspheres will begin immediately. The microspheres consist of a hydrogel core and an exterior shell made from Polyzene-F, CeloNova's polymer which is known to be anti-inflammatory and bacterial-resistant. CeloNova says that Embozene microspheres are the first and only microspheres to be color-enhanced with a different color for each size for increased procedural safety, efficiency and visibility. They are also available in a wider range of sizes than any other spherical embolic on the market. They are available in 40 m, 100 m, 250 m, 400 m, 500 m, 700 m, and 900 m sizes in 1 ml and 2 ml pre-filled syringes and vials.

•Invitrogen (Carlsbad, California) reported the introduction of the BenchPro 4100 Western Processing Device, a benchtop tool developed to automate processing of routine washing and incubation steps for standard laboratory procedures. This device simplifies protein analysis workflows by automating Western blotting; a laboratory technique used in a variety of life science research applications, including studies of antibodies and biological pathways. Western blotting, also referred to as immunoblotting, is a laboratory technique used to detect specific proteins in biological samples through gel electrophoresis. After separation, proteins are transferred to a membrane, where they can be identified using antibodies specific to the protein.

•Iris International (Chatsworth, California) said that it has received Institutional Review Board approval from Duke University Medical Center (Durham, North Carolina) to immediately begin a retrospective clinical study using its NADiA ProsVue ultra sensitive prostate-specific antigen diagnostic assay. The first stage of the clinical study will use retained serum samples of 30 patients whose prostate cancer relapse, or remission, has been clinically confirmed with imaging data or the patient's death. The ProsVue assay will be independently used in this study to assist the company in furthering the hypothesis that NADiA ProsVue can prognosticate patients as low risk of prostate cancer recurrence. In a previously announced retrospective study of stored leftover serum of 85 post-prostatectomy patients, NADiA ProsVue detected levels of PSA after radical prostatectomy that were undetectable using conventional ultra sensitive assays. In this study, the NADiA ProsVue assay detected a rise of PSA concentration on an average 2-1/2 years before tPSA values reached 100 pg/mL (0.1ng/mL), the sensitivity level of conventional PSA assays.