A Medical Device Daily

Mirabilis Medica (Bothell, Washington) reported the closing of a $10.5 million extension to its Series A financing, which was originally led by Charter Life Sciences and vSpring Capital last year.

The series A extension was led by Arboretum Ventures and included Split Rock Partners, Dow Venture Capital, and an individual investor.

The company said the funding will be used to continue developing and testing its image-guided high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) system for treatment of gynecological diseases.

Mirabilis’ technology is designed to allow a physician to destroy pathological tissue deep inside the body without damage to intervening tissue, and to monitor effects with real-time ultrasound imaging — all in a low-cost office setting. While this approach could address a variety of conditions, Mirabilis will initially target uterine fibroids, which cause cramps and bleeding in 25% of women of reproductive age (an estimated 16 million U.S. women). Fibroids account for one-third of the 600,000 annual U.S. hysterectomies. It is estimated that one in three women have a hysterectomy by age 60. Yet most fibroid sufferers — unwilling to submit to such a drastic procedure — remain untreated.

The company was founded in 2004 by Michael Lau, MD; Alexander Lebedev; and Shahram Vaezy, PhD. Vaezy was lead inventor of the company’s patented technology, which was initially developed at the University of Washington (Pullman) and exclusively licensed to Mirabilis.

In other financing news:

• LCA-Vision (Cincinnati), a provider of laser vision correction services under the LasikPlus brand, reported that it recently completed its existing share repurchase plan.

Under the plan, which was approved by the board of directors on Nov. 21, 2006, the company was authorized to purchase up to $50 million of its common stock. Between then and August 13, the company repurchased a total of 1,481,630 shares of its common stock for about $50 million at an average price per share of $33.75.

LCA-Vision currently has about 19,040,664 million shares outstanding, and as of June 30, 2007, had cash equivalents and short-term investments of about $117.3 million.

As of July 31, the company operated 69 LasikPlus fixed-site laser vision correction centers located in 31 states and 54 markets, and a joint venture in Canada.

• The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG; Pittsburgh) said it has invested a total of $450,000 in three companies: Applied Computational Technologies (ACT; Windber, Pennsylvania), Separation Design Group (SDG; Waynesburg, Pennsylvania) and ThermalTherapeutics Systems (TTS; Pittsburgh).

The PLSG’s $100,000 investment in SDG will help it create a prototype medical oxygen concentrator while also developing smaller, more robust adsorbents; and reducing or eliminating the moisture from the adsorbent package. This product has the potential to revolutionize the entire portable medical oxygen market and significantly improve patient care.

The $150,000 investment in ACT will enable the company to propel their product ProACTive into the marketplace. ProACTive, is ACT’s radiation dose calculation engine which enables a new generation of highly accurate, extremely fast treatment planning for full adaptive radiotherapy that can eliminate the accuracy/speed trade-off problem that currently exists in the radiation therapy treatment planning process.

The $200,000 investment in TTS, will help with the development of a prototype pump for delivering chemotherapy more effectively. The TTS device will deliver both intraperitoneal chemotherapy (IPC) and intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy (IPHC) to treat metastastic abdominal cancers regardless of primary site, especially ovarian and colon cancer. No device currently exists which has been specifically designed to treat advanced abdominal cancers, the company said.

The PLSG invests in and supports the growth of biosciences companies in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Applied Computational Technologies, LLC (AppCompTech) is a high-tech software development company formed around its premiere product called ProACTive(TM). ProACTive(TM) is a broad based, patent-pending Particle Transport Simulation technology that is valuable in multiple markets from life sciences to nuclear power. www.appcomptech.com

ThermalTherapeutics Systems, Inc. (TTS) is developing a specialized pump to enable intraperitoneal chemotherapy (IPC) and intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy (IPHC) procedures for treating ovarian and other abdominal cancers.

• Endocare (Irvine, California), which is focused on the development of minimally invasive technologies for tissue and tumor ablation, reported that its previously disclosed one-for-three reverse stock split became effective after the close of the market on Monday (Medical Device Daily, Aug. 8, 2007). Effective at the open of the market today, the company’s shares will begin trading on a split-adjusted basis on the OTC Bulletin Board under the trading symbol ECRE.

The company undertook the reverse stock split to enable it to satisfy the minimum bid price requirement for listing the company’s common stock on the NASDAQ Capital Market. It is expected that Endocare’s common stock will resume trading under the symbol ENDO if and when the company’s NASDAQ listing becomes effective.

The number of post-split common shares outstanding is about 11.6 million. The exercise price and number of common shares related to outstanding warrants and options have been adjusted automatically to reflect the reverse stock split.

Stockholders of record on Aug. 20 will be sent instructions for exchanging their existing stock certificates for new stock certificates and for receiving cash in lieu of any fractional shares resulting from the split. Stockholders with shares held in street name with a brokerage firm will have their accounts adjusted by their respective brokers.

• Home health nursing company Amedisys (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) reported that it filed a shelf registration statement on Form S-3 with the SEC which, when declared effective, will permit the company to offer and sell, from time to time, in one or more offerings, shares of its common stock or preferred stock or any combination of such securities, for proceeds in an aggregate amount up to $250 million.

Amedisys said it has no immediate plans to offer or sell any securities under the registration statement.

“With minimal debt outstanding, and a cash balance at June 30, 2007 of over $97 million, Amedisys has no immediate plans to offer or sell any securities under this registration statement,” said Bill Borne, the CEO of Amedisys. “However, we believe having a shelf registration in place will provide us with additional flexibility in accessing capital markets in the future.”

Amedisys is a provider of home healthcare and hospice services, with agencies located across the U.S. The company was incorporated 1982. In 1994, the company became public and currently trades on The NASDAQ Market under the symbol AMED.