A Medical Device Daily

SP Industries (Warminster, Pennsylvania), a manufacturer of laboratory research and process equipment, reported that it has received $4 million in a senior debt financing and $6.5 million in mezzanine financing from MVC Capital (Purchase, New York), a publicly traded business development company that makes private debt and equity investments.

The investment is being provided to support the buyout of SP Industries by management and private equity firm Riverlake Partners. SP Industries' management team and Riverlake Partners are acquiring the company from Ridge Capital, Merit Capital and Aegon Investment Management.

SP's brands – which include VirTis, Wilmad, LabGlass, Hotpack and Hull – have been commercialized for more than 20 years.

Marks Capital Advisors (New York) reported the closing of a $22 million senior secured term facility for Salus Surgical Group (Beverly Hills, California). The new credit facility replaces the company's existing $12 million senior secured credit facility.

"The new facility was upsized from an initial target of $15 million to $22 million, far exceeding expectations, and closed in just about 10 weeks," said Warren Feder, founding partner of CMCA.

Salus said that the proceeds will be used to repay outstanding senior indebtedness and for general corporate purposes, including ongoing expansion.

Salus develops physician-owned outpatient surgery facilities and hospitals in partnership with what it called "leading physicians."

In other financing activity:

• Mirabel Medical Systems (Austin, Texas), developer of the T-Scan breast cancer screening system, reported closing a $9 million second round of funding.

The over-subscribed round was led by Stockton Partners.

The company said the funding will allow it to continue plans to bring the T-Scan 2000ED to market over the next 12 months.

Harvey Krueger, chairman of Stockton Partners and vice chairman of Lehman Brothers, will join the Mirabel Medical board of directors.

Mirabel said that the T-Scan is the first system designed to be used for routine annual breast cancer risk screening in women ages 30 to 40, who typically have denser breast tissue, as a complement to a clinical breast exam. Women identified as at high risk for breast cancer following a T-Scan screening would then be referred for mammography.

Mirabel has submitted a premarketing approval application to the FDA for the T-Scan 2000ED, and the agency has assigned it expedited review status.

• Calypte Biomedical (Pleasanton, California), a company focused on the development of diagnostic products for the detection of sexually transmitted diseases, reported raising $8 million by issuing secured 8% senior convertible notes plus warrants in a private placement.

The notes have a term of two years and are convertible into about 26.7 million shares of the company's common stock at 30 cents a share. After a period of 18 months and under certain conditions, the company can force the investors to convert any unconverted notes into shares of its common stock.

Calypte said it expects to use the proceeds from the sale of the notes primarily for continuing the commercialization of its rapid tests for HIV-1/2 diagnosis and for general working capital purposes.

In conjunction with the notes, the company also issued to the investors five-year Series A warrants to purchase another 26.7 million shares of its common stock at $0.325 a share and five year Series B warrants to purchase 12 million shares of its common stock at $0.325 a share. Both series of warrants are exercisable after a period of six months.

The company also has the right to force the exercise of the Series B warrants under certain conditions, which could bring an additional $3.9 million.

The investors include Marr Technologies, Calypte's largest stockholder.

• Caprius (Fort Lee, New Jersey) said that with the opening of trading yesterday, its outstanding common stock will be reverse split on a 1-for-20 basis. The trading symbol for the new post-split shares will be CAPS on the OTC bulletin board.

With the reverse split, all of the Series C convertible preferred stock issued in connection with the company's February 2005 placement will convert into the post-split shares of common stock. After the reverse split and the preferred stock conversion, Caprius will have outstanding 3,321,673 shares of common stock.

"The reverse split fulfills one post-closing step of our recent financing," said George Aaron, Caprius' CEO.

Caprius makes equipment for on-site medical waste disposal through its subsidiary M.C.M. Environmental Technologies.