A Medical Device Daily

American Medical Technologies (Corpus Chrisiti) reports the development of a global partnership with Discus Dental (Culver City, California). AMT will act as international sales representative for the BriteSmile brand of professional tooth whitening products as well as the BreathRx brand of professional oral care products throughout the world.

“AMT has a successful sales track record in the global tooth whitening and oral care markets and is well-suited to carry out the distributor sales and service functions that these product lines require,” said Todd Cooper, executive svp global sales & marketing at Discus Dental.

AMT sells dental and medical products to the dental and medical community through its established global federation of dealers and distributors.

Discus Dental distributes oral care products to both the professional and consumer markets worldwide.

In other agreements:

• GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) and Novavax (Rockville, Maryland) reported a collaboration agreement to develop and market a pandemic influenza vaccine manufacturing solution for selected international countries. This collaboration leverages GE Healthcare’s bioprocess solutions and design expertise and Novavax’s virus-like particle (VLP) and manufacturing platform.

Health planners around the world are looking to increase manufacturing capacity and vaccine stockpiles to counter the threat of a global avian flu pandemic: the global demand for pandemic influenza vaccine has been reported as possibly approaching 13 billion doses, with current world capacity at best 2.4 billion doses.

“This collaboration is a great first example of GE Healthcare realizing its strategy of enabling affordable and safe vaccine production for countries that need to better prepare for emerging infectious diseases,” said Peter Ehrenheim, president/CEO, GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

Novavax’s VLP-based H5N1 pandemic flu vaccine is currently in Phase I/IIa clinical trials. The goal is that any required recombinant vaccine could be produced in cell culture within 12 weeks of identification of a pandemic strain, without using eggs or live influenza virus.