A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), a non-profit, reported that its GAP BioLife Fund, part of the GAP Family of Funds, made a $100,000 early-stage investment in OTraces (Herndon, Virginia), a company that offers blood-screening tests for breast and ovarian cancers.

"We are proud to receive an investment from an organization such as CIT," said Keith Lingenfelter, OTraces CEO. "This investment from the GAP BioLife Fund will allow us to secure additional resources and finalize product technology, and will help us develop future medical advancement solutions."

The company said that current standard procedures — primarily mammography, DNA or protein-based tests — are challenged to balance sensitivity with the problem of false positives. OTraces said it addresses these issues with its ultra-sensitive protein detection technology that is several hundred times more sensitive than current practices.

It offers the ability to detect oncology biomarkers by using standard ELISA techniques and "dramatically reducing" the biological background signals which hinder the current methods.

"OTraces offers a non-invasive, unparalleled medical diagnostic solution within the high-need oncology market," Peter Jobse, CIT president/CEO, said in making the announcement.

CIT GAP Funds is a family of venture funds designed to bridge the gap between "family and friends" funding and early-stage equity investments for Virginia-based technology and life science companies. It invests in seed-stage firms.

In other financing news:

• Biofield (King of Prussia, Pennsylvania reported that its 1-for-10 reverse split of its common stock has taken effect. Biofield's new stock symbol on the Nasdaq is BZEC.

Biofield will provide information on its web site, www.biofield.com, about the procedure, forms and other information needed by its transfer agent, American Stock Transfer and Trust Company, to exchange pre-split certificates for post-split certificates.

Biofield is a development-stage medical technology company that has developed a device to assist in detecting breast cancer in a non-invasive procedure, the Biofield Diagnostic System.

• Elron Electronic Industries (Tel Aviv, Israel) reported that it has successfully completed its previously disclosed tender offer to purchase 1,462,640 ordinary shares of Given Imaging (Yokneam, Israel) at $16.54 per share, net to the seller in cash, less any required withholding taxes and without interest.

The tender offer, which commenced on May 16, expired this past Friday.

Elron has been advised by the depositaries for the tender offer that, as of the final expiration of the tender offer, a total of 5,330,044 Given Imaging shares had been validly tendered pursuant to the offer representing about 18.2% of the issued share capital of Given Imaging.

After payment for the Given Imaging shares tendered in the offer and accepted for payment, Elron will own 9,464,820 ordinary shares of Given Imaging, representing about 32.4% of the issued and outstanding shares and voting rights of the company, or 48.5% when taken together with 4,719,528 additional ordinary shares owned by affiliates of Elron.

• Sequenom (San Diego) reported that it has filed a preliminary prospectus supplement to an automatically effective shelf registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed public offering of 5.5 million shares of its common stock.

In connection with the offering, Sequenom plans to grant to the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 825,000 shares of common stock.

All of the shares are being offered by Sequenom, which expects to use the net proceeds of the offering for the development of diagnostic tests for use on its MassArray system and other platforms, and for general corporate purposes.

Lehman Brothers and UBS Investment Bank are joint book-running managers in the offering. Co-managers for are Leerink Swann & Co., Lazard Capital Markets, Oppenheimer & Co. and Rodman & Renshaw.

• CardioNet (Conshohocken, Pennsylvania), a wireless med-tech company with an initial focus on the diagnosis and monitoring of cardiac arrhythmias, said it has filed a resale registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission related to the shares that were underlying the convertible preferred stock issued in March 2007. The shares being registered remain subject to lock-up agreements entered into in connection with CardioNet's IPO, pursuant to which the holders have agreed not to sell such shares until at least Sept. 15 of this year, the company said.

CardioNet provides ambulatory, continuous, real-time outpatient management solutions for monitoring relevant and timely clinical information regarding an individual's health. CardioNet's initial efforts are focused on the diagnosis and monitoring of cardiac arrhythmias with a solution that it markets as the CardioNet system.

• Signature Genomic Laboratories (Spokane, Washington), reported that jVen Capital, a life sciences investment company with a focus in the areas of biotechnology, diagnostics, and devices, has acquired an equity interest in the company. In conjunction with the investment, Evan Jones, the principal of jVen Capital, has been appointed chairman of Signature's board.

Signature, founded in 2003, says it was the first laboratory to provide microarray-based cytogenetic diagnostics with its SignatureChip.