A Medical Device Daily

The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT; Herndon, Virginia), 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 (also Herndon), 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 dealmaking news:

• Vyteris (Fair Lawn, New Jersey), manufacturer of the first FDA-approved active patch transdermal drug delivery system, reported the implementation of a 1 for 15 reverse split of the company's common stock, as well as the designation of a new trading symbol by Nasdaq.

The reverse stock split affects all of the company's common stock, stock options, Series B preferred stock and warrants outstanding immediately prior to the effective date of the reverse stock split. The reverse split will reduce Vyteris common stock outstanding from about 107,959,312 shares to about 7,197,287 shares and the number of authorized shares of common stock has been reduced from 500 million shares to 33,333,333 shares.

"This marks another step in our previously announced plans for restructuring the company's operations and placing the company in a stronger financial position to pursue its strategic plans," said Joseph Himy, Vyteris CFO. "We will continue to focus our efforts on managing resources to become more effective in pursuing joint drug development partnerships in the areas of peptide and biopharmaceutical drug delivery using our proprietary transdermal delivery technology."

Effective Tuesday, Vyteris began trading on a split-adjusted basis under the common stock symbol VYTR.

• IPC The Hospitalist Company (North Hollywood, California) reported that it has filed a registration statement with the SEC in connection with a proposed offering of 5 million shares of its common stock. The 5 million shares to be registered include 3,889,769 shares owned by certain stockholders of the company.

IPC is a national physician group practice company focused on the delivery of hospitalist medicine services. IPC's physicians and affiliated providers manage the care of hospitalized patients in coordination with primary care physicians and specialists.