A Medical Device Daily

APEC (Baldwin Park, California), a contract manufacturer for the medical device industry, has opened APEC Asia, a new manufacturing facility for mid- to high-volume medical molding.

The China facility, which is located in Shenzhen, Guangdong province; carries the same standards as APEC's U.S. location, the company said. It will be fully operational by the end of February.

The Shenzen site was chosen, APEC said, because it has "the best infrastructure in China for high-end manufacturing, a large technical workforce and proximity to Hong Kong, a world-class shipping port."

APEC said it is opening the Chinese facility to support its existing customer base of large medical OEMs, as well as the growing Asian market. The company has been shipping medical parts to Asia for the last four years and said it saw the opportunity to better serve high-end Chinese hospitals with locally manufactured components.

"Asia has become an essential market for us and for our customers," said Anura Welikala, president of APEC. "China is becoming one of the largest markets for luxury products in the world and high-end medical products fit into that category. We see enormous opportunity for growth there."

APEC Asia is a full-service medical molding facility from concept through market delivery, with 35,000 square feet for manufacturing and a Class 100,000 cleanroom. In-house design and mold making is available through APEC's sister company, Magor Mold.

Chinese businessman Victor Tsui of Asia Optical Co. (AOI; Taichung, Taiwan) is a minority owner of APEC Asia, as is industry veteran Bob Desiata, vice president of operations, who will oversee the facility.

Founded in 1997, APEC makes medical device components requiring high precision and critical quality and specializes in mid- to high-volume thermoplastic, silicone, insert and two-shot molding.

PurCotton production starts in China

Winner Medical Group (Shenzen, China) said it has begun production of PurCotton, a new cotton cloth product for use in medical applications, and expects to ship the first order by the end of this month.

The first order for jumbo rolls of raw PurCotton material was received from a Japanese OEM that has indicated it plans to use the rolls of PurCotton to produce hygiene products, such as wipes, wet tissue and alcohol swabs, which it will sell under its own brand name.

Jianquan Li, chairman and CEO of Winner Medical, said the technologically enhanced fabric offers "significant advantages" to traditional woven gauze and synthetic non-woven products, including greater absorbency, higher tensile strength, lower weight and lack of raw edges or extraneous fibers that can exacerbate microbial infection propensity and increase wound-healing complications.

Winner Medical is a holding company comprised of eight wholly owned manufacturing and distribution facilities, two joint venture factories and one trading company. It is primarily engaged in the development, manufacturing and distribution of cotton disposable medical dressings and disposable products, including surgical dressings, dressing packs, wound care dressings, protective products, medical instruments, dental products and hygiene products for the institutional and home care markets.

Canadian distribution agreement set

eGene (Irvine, California), developer of a high-performance genetic analysis technology, said it has entered into a distribution agreement with Fisher Scientific, Canada (Ottawa) to promote and sell the HDA-GT12 system in Canada.

Fisher Scientific, Canada, is a division of Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, Massachusetts), a global provider of analytical instruments, equipment, reagents and consumables, software and services for research, analysis, discovery and diagnostics.

eGene makes microfluidic, miniaturized digital genetic analyzer systems, software and consumables for biological materials testing applications.

SDI cites gains in Japan

Strategic Diagnostics (SDI; Newark, Delaware) said that its partnership with the Oriental Yeast Co. (OYC; Tokyo) is meeting commercialization targets for its Genomic Antibodies service offering within the Japanese life science industry.

Last September, OYC and Strategic Diagnostics expanded their relationship by designating OYC as SDI's exclusive distributor of Genomic Antibodies in Japan. OYC projected a run-rate of $1 million in incremental sales during the first year of commercialization.

Strategic Diagnostics said OYC has a strong direct sales force, with longstanding relationships in the leading Japanese biotechnology, diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies. Oriental Yeast was already was representing SDI's large-scale production antibody business for various mission critical reagents.

SDI said the Genomic Antibodies technology generates novel antibody reagents faster, more cost effectively, and without the need for purified protein or peptide.

$1 .65M financing for Israeli firm

Tissera (Herzliya, Israel) said it has completed an additional equity financing round amounting to a gross of $1.65 million before related expenses. The funds were raised from existing Tissera institutional investors.

The company said the proceeds are earmarked for the continuing support and enhancing of ongoing preclinical studies being performed on primate models of Type I diabetes, as a preparation for the initiation of human clinical studies on diabetic patients.

The research activity of the company is performed at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel).

Amos Eiran, Tissera chairman and CEO, said, "This additional fund raising round . . . is a strong expression of the investors' belief in our company. The proceeds raised will be used to support the completion of the preclinical studies on primate diabetic models, designed to demonstrate the curative potential of the company's proprietary transplantation technology."

Tissera's research efforts are directed toward the development of a universally available and reliable source of animal fetal donor pancreatic precursor tissue, suitable for transplantation and eventual normal structural and functional growth in human diabetics.