• Cardica (Redwood, City, California) and Cook Medical (Bloomington, Indiana) reported expansion of an agreement regarding the development of vascular closure devices first disclosed in June. Cook will pay Cardica up to $750,000 for the development of an additional product for the closure device product line. As part of the prior agreement, Cardica has received $900,000 in fees and is eligible to receive about $2.7 million in additional milestones during the development effort, as well as royalties on future worldwide sales of the device. Similar to the original agreement under which Cardica developed the Cook Vascular Closure Device (CVCD), under this amendment Cardica is responsible for product design and pre-clinical development and is entitled to receive royalties on worldwide sales by Cook. Cook is responsible for clinical development and regulatory approval and has exclusive commercialization rights. Brian Bates, senior VP of business development for Cook Medical, said, "We plan to launch the first product of the Cook Vascular Closure Device line in Europe in the next six months." The potential advantages of the closure devices developed by the companies include, they said, a simple user interface, the ability to place it through the same introducer sheath used for the interventional procedure for greater convenience and speed, scalability and lower cost of goods, they said.
  • Hydromer (Branchburg, New Jersey) reported a two-year coating services agreement with Allium, a medical device company that makes stents and catheters for the urinary and gastro-intestinal tracts. Hydromer has agreed to apply its hydrophilic coatings on various Pebax plastic stent placement catheters under strict FDA cGMP and ISO 13485:2003 conditions. Additionally, Allium has agreed to purchase all their priming and coating services from Hydromer for the specific products described in the agreement. The catheters will be coated using Hydromer-designed and built catheter-coating machines.
  • CompuMed (Los Angeles) reported that it has been awarded a contract by the California Department of Corrections (CDC) to provide ECG services and cardiology over-reads for correctional facilities statewide. CompuMed will provide its CardioGram ECG machines and over-read services, which will link CDC facilities with CompuMed's network of cardiologists. CompuMed CEO Maurizio Vecchione. said,"The CDC contract provides us with a platform for expanding our installed base in California ... " The CardioGram system provides remote cardiac screening at the point of care. It includes a feature that automatically sends ECG results to a cardiologist for an over-read when the results are abnormal, as well as the ability to store data for Electronic Medical Records purposes.
  • Interventional & Surgical Innovations (ISI; New York), and Juan Parodi, MD, have agreed to develop and commercialize a guidewire platform technology for simplifying minimally invasive interventional surgical procedures. Guidewires are used in the vasculature to guide all types of medical treatments, such as angioplasty and stent delivery. ISI will provide both funding as well as development and regulatory expertise to bring this new product to the U.S. market in the 2008/2009 timeframe. Parodi currently is a professor of vascular and endovascular surgery at the University of Miami (Miami).
  • LipoScience (Raleigh, North Carolina) reported a collaboration with BioReference Laboratories (Elmwood Park, New Jersey) to offer the NMR LipoProfile test. Portions of the NMR LipoProfile test, developed by LipoScience, will be used by BioReference in its new Advanced Cardiovascular Testing program. The program provides physicians a cardiovascular report including a suite of results to aid physicians in management of their patients' cardiovascular health. The report functions as a "Report Card" to help patients and their physicians track the results of the ACT test over time. BioReference says it is the largest independent regional clinical laboratory in the Northeast. The test uses NMR spectroscopy to analyze blood plasma samples and provide information about the number of LDL particles in the bloodstream, the optimal measure of LDL and of heart disease risk that LDL causes.
  • Zoll (Chelmsford, Massachusetts) reported receiving an $11.6 million contract as part of the emergency preparedness project for the State of California. Zoll says that it expects to deliver more than 1,200 M Series and AED Pro defibrillators to strategic locations within California by the end of the year. The California Department of Public Health says that it accelerated its emergency plans in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. The Zoll equipment will be used as part of apreparation effort to respond to a possible disasters or terror attacks. The defibrillators will be available at multiple sites in California should a large-scale event occur when patients cannot all be treated at hospitals. The units will be maintained and warehoused at multiple sites to ensure readiness, with support provided by Zoll. The California contract is being coordinated by consolidator Global Protection Acquisition (West Berlin, New Jersey).