PARIS — The French innovation agency OSEO will invest €8.8 million ($12.9 million) for a novel treatment of vertebral compression fractures (VCF) that combines the Spinejack implant from Vexim (Toulouse, France) with orthopedic imaging from Biospace Med (Paris).

Vexim will receive the lion's share of the funding, or €6.1 million ($8.9 million), and will lead the ILI project (Implant, Logiciel, Imagerie) that also includes the contract research group Laboratoire de Biomécanique (LBM), part of the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM).

Biospace Med will receive €2.2 million ($3.2 million) of the OSEO funding.

The ILI partners will integrate medical imaging with software for surgeons to plan the VCF treatment, specify the Spinejack implant to match the identified clinical need, measure and analyze the effects of the surgery, and then to follow the patient's progress.

According to Bruce de la Grange, Vexim's Chairman and CEO, the investment from OSEO will enable the company to broaden the SpineJack product range and further optimize the implant's design.

In August Vexim closed a provisional financing of €2.5 million ($3.5 million) and CEO de la Grange told Medical Device Daily he expected to receive a "substantial amount" from the French government (Medical Device Daily, Aug. 31, 2009).

He is now preparing for a final financing round in 2010 and told Medical Device Daily, "we have had to beat back the interested parties."

Also in August Vexim announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Stryker EMEA (Montreux, Switzerland) for the SpineJack implant covering Germany, the UK, Austria and Ireland.

The agreement represents a significant break-through for the French start-up as it prepares to take on Medtronic (Minneapolis), which holds a lock on the expanding market for vertical compression fracture (VCF), estimated at $600 million globally, thanks to the acquisition of Kyphon (Sunnyvale, California), the pioneer in VCF treatment, for $3.9 billion in 2007. (MDD, July 1, 2009)

SpineJack goes beyond the current procedure for kyphoplasty by restoring post-trauma vertebral height using an adjustable titanium implant inserted into a patient's vertebra.

The 5 mm, expandable titanium device measuring 25 mm in length is implanted in a minimally invasive procedure, typically through two skin incisions.

In July Vexim released the first-year follow up results for a pilot study of 20 patients and said it had enrolled another 100 patients in a pan-European study that will measure clinical outcomes at 12 months.

The European study includes eight centers in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Turkey where the pilot study was conducted at six centers in France.

Vexim received the CE mark for SpineJack in May 2008, but said it delayed commercial release of the implant until it could gather clinical evidence to support the claim of efficacy for a controlled, morphological restoration of the cortical ring and endplates while preserving the spinal joint.

"The evidence show we are not only treating the pain, we are treating the fracture," said Vincent Lefauconnier, the company's chief commercial officer. "All of us are after pain relief, which is the first measure of efficacy," he said.

"Our objective has been to develop a more comprehensive approach to treating these pathologies, with full anatomical restoration of the vertebra," Lefauconnier said.

To measure the restoration of the vertebrae, a critical competitive advantage in the coming competition with Medtronic/Kyphon, Vexim worked with ENSAM to develop an analytical tool comparing before-and-after CT scans.

The software measures the displacement of the anatomical features of a crushed vertebrae and renders what Vexim calls a clear topographical map using color coding to show the movement.

Cytoo raises $4.7M in second round funding

Cytoo (Grenoble, France), a provider of enabling technologies and products for high content cell analysis, reported the closing of a second funding round of $4.7 million (€3.2 million). New investor, Auriga Partners, led the round. An existing investor Jacques Lewiner, co-founder and president of the supervisory board at Cytoo, also took part.

Cytoo said it will use the financing to grow its business internationally, expand the team and further its research and development in an area that is attracting increasing scientific and industrial interest.

"We are very pleased to support Cytoo as it enters a new phase in its development," says Franck Lescure, partner at Auriga Partners. "With products already commercially available and a promising technology, Cytoo is exactly the type of early stage life sciences company with strong market potential that we look to finance."

Cytoo develops products that control internal cell organization, making analysis more reliable. Leveraging its exclusive ownership of an adhesive micropatterning technology, Cytoo focuses on applications in cell-based assays, high content analysis and cell screening for the life science research market. Cytoo's main product, CYTOOchips, is aimed at the scientific research market. Future products under development will target pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Companies form European home healthcare j-v

Innovex (Bracknell, UK), a Quintiles (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) company, and Healthcare at Home (Burton-Upon-Trent, UK) reported that they have agreed to form an innovative healthcare joint venture in Europe, named Healthcare at Home Europe.

Healthcare at Home Europe, a separate legal entity run by its own management board, will develop homecare services, allowing patients to receive specialist treatments at a time and place convenient to them, for example, in the comfort of their own homes, or at their workplace. Healthcare at Home brings a track record of successful delivery of such services in the UK, enhancing patient care and choice while reducing healthcare delivery costs for commissioners, and Innovex brings in-country expertise and resources such as specialist nursing teams throughout Europe.

The j-v will consider opportunities across continental Europe although the initial focus will be in Germany where a pilot project is currently being completed. The German operation will be led by Managing Director, Peter Teich, and a management team, and will roll out homecare services across Germany.