A Medical Device Daily

Potentially bringing large new public financing to a recently successful private placement, DexCom (San Diego) last week filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) in an effort to raise up to $70 million.

The number of shares and the offering price was not disclosed in the filing.

The filing follows the company's completion last month of a Series D private placement of $22.5 million (Medical Device Daily, Jan. 6, 2005).

Warburg Pincus led the “D“ round investment with previous series A, B and C investors participating. The Series C placement in 2002 brought in $30 million for the firm (MDD, June 6, 2002).

With the Series D financing, Sean Carney, a managing director at Warbug Pincus, was added to the DexCom board. Piper Jaffray served as placement agent.

DexCom is focused on developing an implantable system for continuous monitoring of blood glucose levels as an alternative to frequent, painful blood draws. The DexCom Continuous Glucose Monitoring System includes an implantable sensor that continuously measures glucose levels in subcutaneous tissue and wirelessly transmits that data to an external receiver at specified intervals.

The company has said that, “with a push of a button, the receiver displays the patient's current glucose value, as well as one-hour, three-hour and nine-hour trends.“ The receiver also includes an alert that signals out-of-parameter glucose levels.

The system under development has been described as potentially offering two types: a short-term system operating over a three-day period, and a physician-implanted system operating for a year-long period.

DexCom reports “encouraging human clinical data“ from the first generation of its system, and it has made presentations of these results and meetings focused on diabetes management.

It said the IPO funds would be used for clinical trials and other research purposes, for building a commercial infrastructure and for working capital.

As of the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, the company had no revenue and $14 million in costs and expenses.

DexCom has proposed trading on Nasdaq under the symbol DXCM.

In other financing activity, Syneron Medical (Yokneam, Israel), a maker of Electro-Optical Synergy (ELOS) combined-energy medical aesthetic devices, reported that it intends to file a registration statement with the SEC for a public offering of up to 8.05 million of its ordinary shares. The shares would be offered by Syneron security holders.

It is anticipated that the offering will be completed in 1Q05.

Syneron manufactures medical aesthetic devices that are powered by the proprietary ELOS technology of Bi-Polar Radio Frequency and Light. ELOS technology, the company says, provides the foundation for systems that enable physicians to provide advanced solutions for a broad range of medical-aesthetic applications, including hair removal, wrinkle reduction, rejuvenating the skin's appearance through the treatment of superficial benign vascular and pigmented lesions, and the treatment of acne, leg veins and cellulite.

Syneron has offices and distributors worldwide, including North American headquarters in Canada, European headquarters in Germany and Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.

EDAP retains Halliburton Investor Relations

EDAP TMS (Vaulx-en-Velin, France) has retained Halliburton Investor Relations (Dallas) to assist the company in its efforts to communicate with the investment community.

EDAP TMS manufactures the Ablatherm system for high- intensity focused ultrasound treatment of localized prostate cancer and certain other types of tumors.

It also commercializes equipment for treatment of urinary tract stones using extra-corporeal shockwave lithotripsy.