A Medical Device Daily

Micrus Endovascular (San Jose, California) and Chemence Medical Products (Alpharetta, Georgia) reported an agreement to jointly develop liquid embolic products for neurovascular indications using Chemence's cyanoacrylate technology and intellectual property.

Micrus will oversee the regulatory and clinical process and be the exclusive worldwide distributor for neurovascular products developed based on the agreement.

Micrus said it has made an upfront payment to Chemence and will make additional payments upon achieving certain development milestones, the specifics of the payments not disclosed.

"We see significant potential for a liquid embolic to be used either in conjunction with embolic coils or by itself for the treatment of aneurysms. The unique properties of Chemence's cyanoacrylate technologies may prove capable of providing complete occlusion and treatment of cerebral aneurysms within a matter of minutes," said John Kilcoyne, CEO and chairman of Micrus. "Chemence is a leader in specialty medical adhesives with an extensive track history of developing materials based on strong technology, clinical aptitude and a solid intellectual property position."

Micrus products are used to treat both cerebral aneurysms responsible for hemorrhagic stroke and intracranial atherosclerosis, which may lead to ischemic stroke.

In other agreement news:

• Smiths Medical MD (St. Paul, Minnesota) said it would distribute the FreeStyle Navigator Continuous Glucose Monitoring System from Abbott Diabetes Care (Alameda, California). Financial terms were not disclosed.

The FreeStyle Navigator system is designed to continually record interstitial fluid glucose levels for the purpose of improving diabetes management.

• Aperio Technologies (Vista, California), a provider of digital pathway systems, reported that it has been an ongoing collaborator with Burnham Institute for Medical Research (La Jolla, California) to use Asperio's ScanScope slide scanning system and quantitative immunohistochemistry tools to assist in the validation and clinical translation of Burnham's cancer biomarkers.

Aperio said it worked with Burnham researchers to develop advanced image analysis algorithms for Burnham's dual or multicolor stainings in histology and immunohistochemistry to facilitate the simultaneous measurement of protein expression, cell typing, or protein colocalization.

• Telemedicus (Houston) said it has agreed to team with NuPhysicia (Galveston, Texas). Telemedicus sells the Dreams ambulance telemedicine technology. NuPhysicia also specializes in telemedicine services. The two companies will explore business lines that combine their technologies and business methods for new medical service offerings. Telemedicus and NuPhysicia say the base technologies of their systems, secure IP data transmissions, are complimentary. The companies also expect to operate joint trials of an integrated system over the next quarter.

• Avality (Jacksonville, Florida) and Health Market Science (HMS; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania), a manufacturer of healthcare provider reference data in the U.S., have expanded their license agreement. Having initially licensed information for select states, the expanded agreement with HMS gives Availity access to detailed reference information about more than 4.5 million individual providers and 1 million provider organizations nationwide, the company said.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported an agreement with Toshiba America Medical Systems (TAMS; Tustin, California) for MRI products and point of sale service agreements. The contract is available to acute and continuum of care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

• Perot Systems (Plano, Texas) said it has agreed to help Surgical Care Affiliates (SCA; Birmingham, Alabama) improve support for its more than 2,000 physician partners and 130 outpatient surgery centers and surgical hospitals across the country.

Perot's services will include strategic application assessment and advisory services, application and infrastructure support, network design and administration, service desk operation, as well as hosting for SCA's corporate computing and telecommunications environment.