A Medical Device Daily

Luminex (Austin, Texas) reported that it is initiating an underwritten public offering of 3.5 million shares of its common stock. The company said it expects to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 525,000 shares of common stock to cover any over-allotments.

If all the shares are exercised, the company could raise close to $90.14 million before expenses, based on Monday's closing share price of $22.41.

Luminex said it intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including research and development, potential acquisitions and capital expenditures.

J.P. Morgan Securities and UBS Investment Bank are joint book-running managers for the offering.

Luminex develops biological testing technologies with applications throughout the life sciences industry. The company's xMAP system is an open-architecture, multi-analyte technology platform that delivers bioassay results to markets as diverse as pharmaceutical drug discovery, clinical diagnostics and biomedical research, including the genomics and proteomics research markets.

In other financing news:

•BSP (Tel Aviv, Israel) a company developing systems for non-invasive diagnosis and monitoring of ischemic heart disease (IHD), reported that they successfully raised $2.6 million in a private funding round, that included existing shareholders in the company as well as new investors.

BSP developed the HyperQ, a technology that offers cardiac monitoring for broad populations and testing for IHD. The HyperQ system has received FDA clearance, as well as the CE mark.

The company has entered the clinical and commercial phase, during which the HyperQ system will be integrated in inpatient and outpatient hospital settings, private doctor offices and major research centers.

Further applications on the horizon include bedside monitors for ischemic events, devices for cardiac home care and telemedicine, and the implementation of the HyperQ technology in implantable cardiac devices.

"This round will enable us to step up the marketing and business development efforts in the U.S., and accelerate development of BSP's next application the HyperQ bedside monitor," said CEO Amir Beker. He added that the system "adresses the dire needs of private and national healthcare systems to balance the immense costs of cardiac diagnosis and monitoring."

•PerGenix (Henderson, Nevada), a private company founded a year ago that is developing low cost, rapid, lab-quality diagnostics for the professional and consumer diagnostics market, has received an investment from Ault Glazer & Co. Terms of the transaction were undisclosed.

The founder and CEO, Robert Case, has an extensive background in the medical device and diagnostics field. The firm said it anticipates FDA clinical field testing of its product in 1Q09.

"There must be clear actionable benefit from diagnostic testing for the home testing consumer and chronically ill patient," said Case. "This will require more understandable, accurate and robust home testing than current methods can provide. We believe this can be achieved through the wireless integration of the clinical lab into the testing regime to ensure the validity and interpretation of test results, followed by immediate and direct delivery of the results to both the consumer/patient and physician."

•American Scientific Resources (ASR; Weston, Florida) reported that it has retained the services of Ideal Management Corp., a corporate financing entity, to secure a multi-million-dollar line of credit which would fund the purchasing of inventory and AR financing for the company's subsidiary, Kidz-Med (also Weston), a provider of health and safety devices for children.

ASR is a provider of health and safety products through its Kidz-Med and Heart Smart System (New Paltz, New York) units.