A Diagnostics & Imaging Week
Medtronic (Minneapolis) reported this week that it has bought substantially all glucose monitoring assets from PreciSense (Horsholm, Denmark), a development company focused on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
"This strategic acquisition is an effort to expand Medtronic's already robust continuous glucose monitoring pipeline, and to develop a new CGM platform to aid development of our 'closed-loop' system," said Chris O'Connell, president of Medtronic's Diabetes business unit and a senior vice president at Medtronic. "This potentially disruptive technology could significantly broaden the use of CGM, and help improve diabetes care for more patients."
The announcement was made during a webcast presentation delivered by O'Connell on the state of Medtronic's Diabetes business unit and its strategic plan. O'Connell also discussed the significant increase in R&D spending in the Diabetes business, and he gave an update on the business unit's next generation insulin pumps, Personal CGM and Professional CGM, diabetes management software, and closed-loop product platforms.
According to the company, CGM is one of the most significant advances in diabetes management technology because it shows people their changing glucose levels in real-time. Medtronic said it has the only diabetes management system that integrates the power of CGM with insulin pump therapy, the MiniMed Paradigm REAL-Time Continuous Glucose Monitoring System. This device is designed to allow diabetes patients to better deliver insulin and monitor their glucose levels. With trend graphs, directional arrows and alarms, the device can also alert patients to dangerous high and low glucose values and allow them to take preemptive action to better manage their diabetes, Medtronic said.
A closed-loop system, sometimes referred to as an "artificial pancreas," mimics the insulin delivery of a normal pancreas using technology that automatically responds to and treats glucose fluctuations in patients with diabetes, Medtronic noted. Using advanced mathematical algorithms, Medtronic's closed-loop system is being designed to continuously monitor glucose levels and automatically adjust insulin delivery in patients.
/In other dealmaking activity:
• Oxford Biosensors (Yarnton, Oxford), has been put up for sale following the appointment of Andrew Pear and Ian Cadlock of Tenon Recovery as joint administrators.
The company says it has developed unique technology for point-of-care electro chemical testing for lipids and other analytes, for use in the cholesterol, diabetes and renal function diagnostic testing markets. Its lead product is a lipid diagnostic panel, which is designed for monitoring patients' cardiac risk and the impact of therapy, leading to an improvement in clinical outcomes. The panel enables the testing to be undertaken in the doctor's office in about 5 minutes with results comparable to those performed in a clinical laboratory. This product is now being finalized for FDA approval and launch, according to the company.
• Acacia Research (Newport Beach, California) reported that its subsidiary, Acacia Patent Acquisition, has acquired the rights to patents for medical image manipulation technology.
"As Acacia's licensing success grows, more patent owners are selecting us as their partner for the licensing of their patented technologies," said Paul Ryan, Acacia chairman/CEO. "Acacia is rapidly becoming the leader in technology licensing and we continue to grow our base of future revenues by adding new patent portfolios."
This technology generally relates to the manipulation of medical images and can be used in the surgical process.