• BodyMedia (Pittsburgh) said it has begun shipping SenseWear WMS (weight management solution) to its clinical customers. The company said that SenseWear WMS is the first ever web-based clinical weight management solution to focus on behavior therapy and is designed to improve weight loss outcomes by increasing patient adherence to behavior prescriptions. The system is designed to promote significant and sustainable lifestyle changes for weight loss and improved health by enabling health practitioners and their patients to continuously and easily monitor daily behaviors such as calories burned, nutrition and sleep. SenseWear WMS consists of the SenseWear armband for the automated tracking of activity and sleep, the SenseWear display for real-time feedback and the SenseWear WMS web site for users to upload armband data and manually track nutrition intake and weight. The solution enables practitioners to offer short-term metabolic assessment and behavior therapy programs as well as longer term weight management programs customized to the current readiness and goals of each patient. BodyMedia makes metabolic assessment and behavior therapy solutions for the treatment of obesity, diabetes and CVD.

• IOPtima (Ramat Gan, Israel) said that it has completed development of its OT134 device, a laser-based therapy for the treatment of glaucoma. The second-generation OT134 is based on IOPtima's laser-based technology known as LNPDS (CO2 Laser Non-Penetrating Deep Sclerectomy) that has already been successfully tested on 23 glaucoma patients in clinical trials. The OT134 upgrades the previous prototype with improved efficacy and ergonomic features. IOPtima's approach removes the risk of perforating the membrane and minimizes the risk of perforating the scleral tissue because its CO2 laser-based system is self-terminating once the desired scleral thickness has been achieved. This self-regulation is possible because the CO2 laser essentially stops ablating as soon as it comes in contact with the intra-ocular percolated liquid, which is what occurs as soon as the laser reaches the optimal residual intact layer thickness. IOPtima (formerly Optotech) makes technologies for the treatment of glaucoma.

• Siemens Medical (Hoffman Estates, Illinois) said that it has been granted an investigational new drug (IND) exemption by the FDA to conduct a phase I clinical trial of [F-18] 3'-fluoro-3'-deoxythymidine (FLT), a molecular imaging biomarker that has shown promise in monitoring the proliferation of cancer cells, which could help physicians quickly determine the effectiveness of cancer therapies. The significance of FLT is that it may be able to allow researchers and physicians to detect the rate of the proliferation of cancerous cells through a molecular imaging technique like PET/CT (positron emission tomography/computed tomography), by enabling visualization of key steps in the replication of DNA, which precedes cell division. By enabling the imaging of the biological processes within cancer cells, FLT could help physicians to personalize cancer therapies by more quickly assessing cancer therapies, avoiding ineffective therapies and determining the most appropriate treatment for an individual patient. Siemens Medical, a division of Siemens, is one of the world's largest suppliers to the healthcare industry.

• Visualase (Houston), with its research partner BioTex (Houston), and the Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris healthcare network (Paris) have enrolled and completed treatment of the first six patients in a pilot, phase I study, with the objective to demonstrate the safety of the Visualase magnetic resonance-guided laser thermal ablation technique for the minimally invasive treatment of brain metastasis. An independent review after the first three treatments as required by the study protocol found that the technique was safe and that the trial should be allowed to progress to the next level in which larger tumors from additional sources could be included. The results obtained from the first six treatments demonstrate that the technique is feasible and safe for all the procedures performed. The Visualase computer workstation processes the MR images to provide real time temperature maps and estimates of thermal damage around the applicator. The Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris a healthcare provider in Europe including a network of 38 hospitals in the Paris region. Visualase, a privately held company that is focused on product development, of advanced laser and image-guided technologies for minimally invasive thermal ablation applications.