Advances in imaging and interventional endoscopy are improving cancer detection and enabling less invasive approaches to diagnose and treat disorders in the gastrointestinal tract. These emerging procedures are poised to fuel growth in the $7 billion global market for GI endoscopy.
Our third annual survey of institutional and corporate VCs arrives as life science investing reaches a crossroads. Public markets are gung ho for new biotech companies, lifting the spirits of a subset of our respondents, but VCs still face big hurdles to raise new funds.
The firm’s bare-bones booth at the North American Spine Society annual meeting was a conspicuous sign of strains between Medtronic and the clinical group over how issues surrounding its rhBMP-2 Infuse bone graft have been presented.
Illumina’s MiSeqDx instrument and MiSeqDx Universal Kit, granted de novo approval, allow clinicians to “develop and validate sequencing of any part of a patient’s genome,” FDA says.
Novel arrhythmia mapping technologies, once they are clinically proven and validated, could change practice paradigms in the atrial fibrillation ablation space but in the meantime work continues on nearer-term advances that could make AF ablation more effective and durable. Three of the most promising – contact force sensing, endoscopic laser ablation, and atrial fibrosis imaging, from such companies as Endosense, Biosense Webster, CardioFocus, and Marrek – have recently achieved some important milestones in their journeys toward US market approval.
Armed with a $40 million Series A financing, electroCore is pressing ahead with pivotal trials in several headache indications, with other neural and immune conditions to follow. With drug firms upping their interest in so-called “electroceuticals,” it could signal a shift away from certain pharmaceutical treatments.
Philanthropists Gary and Mary West have launched an effort to find a solution to out-of-control health care costs. Led by two former medical device executives, the West Health Institute is trying to usher in a new, more efficient health care delivery system that will have enormous implications for medtech companies.
CDRH Director Jeffrey Shuren fears the center won’t be able to meet commitments to hire new employees for FY 2014 if the sequester continues, he told members of the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee last week.
TYRX Inc. has received FDA clearance for a fully-resorbable version of its antibacterial envelope, used to prevent surgical site infections in patients who receive implantable devices such as ICDs. The resorbable device has important advantages over the previous durable envelope and could substantially boost physician adoption of the company’s technology.
InfraReDx raised $25 million in late August, another step in its long journey to change the standard of care for coronary artery disease. With the latest financing, the company has raised some $175 million since its founding in 1998, and although it still has far to go, in that length of time InfraReDx, and an understanding of coronary Artery disease, have come a long way.
