A Medical Device Daily

Sanarus Medical (Pleasanton, California) reported a partnership with breast care physicians from centers across the country, including breast care physicians from Connecticut to California, to increase the awareness and availability of a non-surgical treatment option for women with benign breast tumors, known as fibroadenomas.

Sanarus will host a gathering of these new centers prior to the American College of Surgeons (ACS; Chicago) annual meeting in New Orleans, Oct. 7-11. These centers will participate in regional and national efforts to increase patient and primary care physician awareness of the Visica 2 treatment as a minimally invasive, safe and effective treatment alternative to surgical excision. These centers will participate in a patient registry to document the clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction rates following Visica 2 treatment.

Additionally, the centers will seek to expand private health insurance coverage of this treatment option, making it more widely available to women across the country.

Sanarus said it plans to include as many as 20 centers in this program before the end of the year.

“I am very pleased to be a part of this important program that will offer more options to my patients. This technology makes cryoablation easier and faster than ever before and not only does that make sense for my practice, it makes the procedure very appealing to my patients,” said Andrew Kenler, MD, a Connecticut surgeon practicing at one of the new Visica 2 Reference Centers.

The original Visica Treatment System received FDA clearance in 2002, with more than 1,500 fibroadenomas treated since then. The Visica 2 System has been available at “select sites” since April of 2007. The Visica 2 Treatment System uses liquid nitrogen as the freezing agent, avoiding the need for large, high pressure tanks of argon and helium used in the original Visica system.

The procedure can be completed in the physician’s office, with most treatment times under 15 minutes. Early experience has shown excellent physician and patient satisfaction with the new Visica 2 Treatment System, Sanarus said.

Sanarus develops minimally invasive, office-based breast care management solutions from diagnosis/treatment to follow up.

In other agreements:

• Dermacare Laser & Skin Care Clinics (Scottsdale, Arizona), a laser skin-care franchisor, reported a partnership with the University of Florida (UF; Gainsville, Florida). The university’s division of plastic and reconstructive surgery faculty members will use Dermacare’s technology to train Dermacare physicians and other clinicians in laser techniques at the Dermacare of Gainesville clinic and training center, one of three Dermacare training centers.

“This is an historic arrangement, the first of its kind between an aesthetic skin care clinic and a major university, and validation of our constant focus on safety and evidence-based practices,” said Carl Mudd, Dermacare president/CEO.

UF will assign a physician specializing in plastic and reconstructive surgery as the training center’s onsite medical director, who will: analyze critique and approve training protocols; design and implement quality-control procedures; consult on treatment plans; and supervise the clinic’s medical and medical/administrative tasks.

Dermacare franchises are located in 12 states and will expand to Asia with a clinic opening in Singapore this month.

• GeneGo (St. Joseph, Michigan), a systems biology tools company reported that Organon (Roseland, New Jersey), the healthcare business unit of Akzo Nobel (Oss, the Netherlands), has extended its GeneGo software and database licenses. In addition to extending the MetaCore license, Organon has also added MetaLink so that it can upload its own interaction data and visualize it in the context of MetaCore’s manually curated content.

GeneGo says it offers automated workflows now also available through its new product 1-2-3 workflow, a pay-as -you-go business model. GeneGo also covers human, mouse, rat, dog, worm, chicken, fly, chimpanzee and yeast.

“GeneGo has demonstrated the capability to develop a good pharma oriented bioinformatics tool in the past years,” said Peter Groenen, project manager for pharmacogenetics at Organon. “We have now started to use their software for more advanced projects to support our translational medicine efforts.”