PERTH, Australia – Australian medication adherence technology firm Adherium Ltd. is relaunching itself after a management reshuffle and a successful capital raise of AU$5.4 million (US$3.5 million) to deploy a new commercial strategy.
The U.S. FDA has given its nod to Novalung, a heart and lung support system from Fresenius Medical Care North America (FMCNA) for the treatment of acute respiratory or cardiopulmonary failure. The Waltham, Mass.-based company noted that Novalung is the first extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) system to be cleared for more than six hours of use.
BEIJING – CF Pharmtech Inc., of Suzhou, China, closed a ¥630 million (US$90 million) series E financing round to bring its inhaled respiratory drugs to global markets and replace imports with homegrown products faster.
A Chinese study has established a previously unknown direct mechanistic link between elevated mechanical tension caused by impaired alveolar regeneration and progressive idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), highlighting a pathogenic mechanism that may underlie fibrosis.
HONG KONG – Negev-based Ben-Gurion University (BGU) and Beersheba-based Soroka Medical Center in Israel, working with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati (UC), have developed a technology for unblocking and removing secretions from airways to to treat patients with diseases affecting the respiratory tract.
LONDON – Mologic Ltd. has started recruitment in a 263-patient trial to validate its urine-based home test for anticipating exacerbations of chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (COPD). The lateral flow immunoassay self-test detects five biomarkers of the lung disease in urine that are indicative of inflammation and infection.
TORONTO – On average, radiology specialists diagnose fewer than 50% of cases of collapsed lung or pneumothorax using chest X-rays, said systems design engineer Hamid Tizhoosh. The Insignio system developed at Tizhoosh's Kitchener, Ontario-based Kimia Lab has gone further by identifying 75% of cases of collapsed lungs using artificial intelligence (AI) to search a database of 550,000 patients and compare 30,000 cases of pneumothorax there to X-rays of new patients with unknown conditions.
Penumbra Inc. reported final results from its IDE trial of the Indigo Aspiration system at the Vascular Interventional Advances (VIVA) annual meeting in Las Vegas. The Alameda, Calif.-based company said that the EXTRACT-PE trial met its primary endpoints in patients with acute pulmonary embolism (PE).
It was a standout quarter for San Diego-based Resmed Inc., which saw revenues jump to $681.1 million, with the U.S., Canada and Latin America serving as bright spots. "We have started fiscal year 2020 right where we left off with 2019," Michael Farrell, Resmed's CEO, said during a call on the results. "Our team achieved another quarter of the balanced growth across the portfolio, driven by continued strong performance in the mask category."
Edmonton, Alberta-based startup Tevosol Inc. is hoping to make its mark in the growing warm perfusion organ transport market with a portable system for lungs that leverages a unique negative pressure ventilation technology. The company recently raised CAD$2 million (US$1.5 million) in seed financing to advance its Ex-Vivo Organ Support System (EVOSS) and is seeking a lead investor for a series A round to further product development and support clinical trials.