A Medical Device Daily

Hatch Medical (Duluth, Georgia), a medical device incubator and technology brokerage firm, said it has agreed to broker Evexar Medical's (Bromley, UK) self-expanding, collagen-based sealing technology, EndoSeal.

According to Evexar, Endovascular aortic repair was introduced in the mid 1990's as a minimally invasive alternative to open surgical repair and was aimed at reducing many of the associated risks with current surgical techniques. Unfortunately, while aortic endografts provide numerous benefits, complications often follow this procedure, the company said.

One of the more significant complications is an endoleak, a condition often attributed to a poor seal between the endograft and the native vessel at its extremities. Such endoleaks, if left untreated, predictably result in ongoing pressure in the aneurysmal sac with the associated risk of rupture.

Evexar says its technology effectively seals gaps that can occur between an endograft and an irregular vessel wall, ensuring a secure seal and substantially reducing the possibility of endoleaks.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Forward Industries (Pompano Beach, Florida), a designer and distributor of custom carrying case solutions, said it has engaged vFinance Investments (Boca Raton, Florida) as its financial advisor to assist in identifying and evaluating prospective targets for acquisition.

Forward Industries designs carrying case solutions primarily for cellular phones and home medical diagnostic equipment.

• Endocare (Irvine, California) said it has entered into an agreement with its former CFO, John Cracchiolo. Cracchiolo's indemnification agreement was terminated in exchange for Endocare's waiver of certain severance and legal fee reimbursement rights. For September through December, the company said it had budgeted more than $875,000 for Cracchiolo's legal costs. As a result of this new agreement, Endocare is no longer obligated to pay any future legal costs for Cracchiolo.

Endocare is focused on the development of minimally invasive technologies for tissue and tumor ablation.