Article preview from IN VIVO - December, 2011
Privately held DFINE Inc., a supplier of tools for treating vertebral compression fractures in the spine, is trying to reposition itself from being a spine company to an “interventionalist company” that provides tools necessary to interventional radiologists, neuroradiologists, and oncologists.
Article preview from IN VIVO - December, 2011
Perhaps DFINE Inc. should consider renaming itself, ReDFINE. The privately held company, a supplier of a system that incorporates radiofrequency energy and articulating osteotomes used in treating vertebral compression fractures in the spine, is working to shed a label that once would have almost guaranteed it a meeting with any medical device investor on Sand Hill Road – spine company. Instead, DFINE is trying to apply a far broader tag to its business. The company is tagging itself as an “interventionalist company,” one capable of providing the tools necessary to interventional radiologists, interventional neuroradiologists and interventional oncologists. This focus ultimately could take DFINE beyond the spine into treatments of other diseases of the bone, particularly cancer.
The shift in DFINE’s focus speaks to two undeniable truths. First, the spinal market doesn’t carry the cachet it once did. The pressures facing the industry have been well documented and experienced, and discussed at length in the halls of the latest North American Spine Society Annual Meeting. Many venture capitalists have lost faith in spinal companies after watching heavily funded businesses shut down with nothing to show. Every segment of spine has been affected, but perhaps vertebral compression fracture companies have been hit the hardest. The sector never quite recovered from the publication in The New England Journal of Medicine of two clinical studies in 2009 that suggested vertebroplasty procedures – the injection of bone cement into a fractured vertebral body – weren’t effective treatments. The reports set off an avalanche of disappointing developments for the entire group of vertebral compression fracture companies including market leader Medtronic Inc., which has reported minimal growth in the spine division that includes Kyphon, the largest supplier of vertebral augmentation – or kyphoplasty – procedures.
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