Cook Medical (Bloomington, Indiana) reported that it has developed what it is calling the first endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) needle in the U.S. that can acquire histological samples. The device, the EchoTip ProCore Endobronchial Ultrasound Needle, is said to give physicians the ability to retrieve both cell and tissue samples from lymph nodes or tumors in the pulmonary area.
Gaining funding has never been more difficult. It seems as if it's becoming harder and harder to gain traction with venture capitalist to gain the necessary amount to get a company off the ground. But with stronger and more stringent demands on gaining funding it's going to be the med-tech CEO that can navigate through these stormy waters that's going to be more successful.
One would be hard-pressed to argue that 2008 wasn't an eventful year. Barrack Obama was elected 44th president of the U.S.; Delta Air Lines merged with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of U.S. legacy carriers to 5; Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud in $50 billion Ponzi scheme. It was also the year that everything changed for med-tech firms seeking investment dollars as stock exchanges saw some of their steepest declines ever, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.
In 2012, during a panel at the Southeastern Medical Device Association (SEMDA; Norcross, Georgia) med-tech serial entrepreneur Jerry Gibson uttered the unforgettable phrase that today's "A-round funding is yesterday's B-round funding."
Edwards Lifesciences (Irvine, California) is reporting that it has received an additional indication for its Sapien XT transcatheter heart valve in Europe. The company received the CE mark for use of the device for valve-in-valve procedures.
Could new data lead to MDx Health (Irvine, California) pursuing an additional indication for its ConfirmMDx assay? That seems to be the question after preliminary results from a study presented at the 2014 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium 2014 in San Francisco last week, confirmed that epigenetic profiling of selected genes provides prognostic information, corresponding to Gleason score (GS), could help to identify patients with aggressive prostate cancer.
