A Medical Device Daily

Orthofix International (Huntersville, North Carolina) said it has entered into an agreement with Berkeley Advanced Biomaterials (BAB; Berkeley, California), a maker of skeletal repair resorbable biomaterials, in which Orthofix will market and distribute an FDA-cleared line of bone repair resorbable biomaterials engineered by BAB for trauma and reconstruction applications.

Orthofix will market and sell this line of BAB resorbable biomaterials that will be packaged for Orthofix as granules, blocks, moldable putty and putty-injection kits. This line of osteoconductive bone scaffold biomaterials based on nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite technology is engineered to resorb quickly, thereby allowing bone to remodel rapidly, the companies said. Orthofix will be branding the BAB line of products as OsteoMax.

Orthofix offers a line of minimally invasive surgical, as well as non-surgical, products for the spine, reconstruction, and trauma market sectors.

Arrowhead Research (Pasadena, California) said it plans to redeem its outstanding redeemable warrants to purchase common stock.

The company’s common stock closed at $2.80 a share on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market on April 25, triggering, it said, its decision to plan for a warrant call by May 6.

Under their terms, the warrants may be called so long as certain trading conditions are met, namely, the company’s common stock must trade at $3 or above for 20 consecutive trading days ending not less than 15 days preceding the date of redemption

The price of common stock remained at or above $3 throughout 2005 until Monday, and, accordingly, the company must redeem the warrants in the next 15 days or satisfy the market condition for future redemption.

The warrants are exercisable for $1.50 a share and are redeemable at the redemption price of $0.001 a share upon 30 days’ written notice. Any warrant not exercised by the exercise deadline will expire and will be redeemed by the company for $0.001 a share.

To date, 1.7 million of the 13.8 million warrants originally issued have been exercised.

If all outstanding warrants are exercised, the company will have received, in total, about $21 million in exercise proceeds, which it said it would use to fund its subsidiaries, the company’s research projects and general working capital purposes.

Arrowhead Research is a development-stage nanotechnology company. It operates four majority owned subsidiary companies: Aonex Technologies, developing semi- conductor nanomaterial technology; Insert Therapeutics, developing a nanoscale drug delivery system; Nanotechnica, developing a variety of nanoscale devices and systems, including laboratory on a chip; and Calando, a company developing nanostructures for delivery and therapeutic use of RNA interference.

In other financing activity:

Fisher Scientific International (Hampton, New Hampshire), a provider of products and services to the scientific community, reported that a majority of holders in principal amount of its outstanding 8-1/8% senior subordinated notes due 2012 have provided the requisite consents to amend the indenture governing the notes.

Holders have until 5 p.m. EDT today to validly tender their notes and receive the total consideration, which includes a $30 per $1,000 principal amount consent payment.

The tender offer remains open and is scheduled to expire at midnight EDT on May 11 unless extended. However, holders who tender after the consent payment deadline will receive the total consideration minus the $30 consent payment.

Prospex Medical (Arden Hills, Minnesota), a medical technology incubator, reported that it has secured a $1.5 million seed round of financing.

Polaris Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) co-led the round, joined by Michael Berman, who will serve as chairman of the company.

Vital Images (Minnetonka, Minnesota) a provider of enterprise-wide advanced visualization solutions, and R2 Technology (Sunnyvale, California), a maker of computer-aided detection (CAD) technology, have signed a three-year sales and marketing agreement.

The companies will jointly sell R2 Technology’s ImageChecker CT Lung CAD software integrated into Vital Images’ recently released CT Lung visualization option.

The companies said this new agreement will create a technology solution that combines Vital Images’ core competency of advanced visualization with R2’s core competency of CAD as well as allowing for closer collaboration with sales and marketing.

Vital Images developed the CT Lung visualization option and recently introduced it in Vitrea 2, Version 3.7.

Currently, R2 Technology is the only company that has received FDA approval for the use of CAD in improving the detection of actionable lung nodules during review of multi-detector CT chest exams.

CAD algorithms examine a CT chest study and automatically mark areas warranting further examination, which it is hoped will increase diagnostic accuracy and physician productivity.

InnerWireless (Richardson, Texas) said it has established a healthcare business unit to deliver the Medical-Grade Wireless Utility. The utility includes a unifying wireless platform and portfolio of services to facilitate the development of an adaptive mobile enterprise strategy.

Accelerated by the recent closing of a $15 million Series C investment, InnerWireless said it has completed the first phase and launch of a dedicated healthcare team. The newly formed business unit includes marketing and corporate development staff, and additional regional sales offices.

The Medical-Grade Wireless Utility architecture is designed to allow hospitals to deploy an array of wireless applications and devices for real-time clinical communications, monitoring and therapy, as well as wireless building services, on a unified, common wireless infrastructure. Additionally, the InnerWireless utility includes a portfolio of services to assist hospitals with the planning, deployment and management of their wireless environment.

In addition to InnerWireless’ current investors, the Series C funding marks the initial investment in Inner-Wireless by Centennial Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in emerging network and enabling software companies.

In connection with the investment, Centennial Ventures managing director, David Hull, has joined the Inner-Wireless board of directors.

Health Care REIT (Toledo, Ohio) said it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, $250 million in aggregate principal amount of senior unsecured notes due 2015.

The company said it intends to use proceeds from this offering to fund a redemption of all of its outstanding 8.17% notes due March 2006; redemption of at least $75 million of its 7.5% notes due August 2007; and a proposed public tender offer for any and all of its 7.625% senior notes due March 2008.

In the event that the company does not use the full amount of the net proceeds from this offering to complete the redemptions and tender offer, it said it intends to use the remaining net proceeds to repay borrowings under its unsecured lines of credit arrangements and other outstanding indebtedness.

Health Care REIT is a real estate investment trust that invests primarily in skilled nursing and assisted living facilities.