Innovation rules the week at MedCity News — Weekend Rounds, June 5, 2009

Innovation in medical devices. Innovation in vaccines. Even innovation in regulating drug development -- MedCity News saw it all last week.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Innovation in medical devices. Innovation in vaccines. Even innovation in regulating drug development — MedCity News saw it all last week.

The week started with the appointment of a new chairman for the National Venture Capital Association who seems to think highly of health care — Polaris Ventures co-founder Terry McGuire.

“With the incredible advancements in genomics, computational power and miniaturization, we are arguably entering into a golden age of innovation in life sciences (which encompasses health IT, medical devices, diagnostics, and touches adjacent areas such as materials science and robotics,” McGuire told Jeff Bussgang, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, during an interview.

Then Dormir, the Indiana parent company that oversees firms that build sleep centers and provide respiratory care services, raised $8 million to grow both businesses. CHL Medical Partners and Noro-Moseley Partners led the round. Dormir Chief Executive Tim Miller said in a press release that the money would be used to support extremely fast growth in its businesses.

One of the biggest stories of innovation this week week hit on Tuesday: Cleveland Clinic researcher Vince Tuohy landed a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue his research on a breast cancer vaccine — and that on his first try for a grant. Other vaccines are being developed to treat women who have breast cancer. Tuohy’s vaccine would be used prophylactically — to prevent women from getting the cancer.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati, Ohio, contract research organization Kendle International Inc. said it added locations in the capital cities of Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand — betting with the rest of the industry that more medical trials will take place outside of the United States, and in Asia in particular.

Also on Tuesday, Medtronic made another in a series of maneuvers to strengthen its position in the diabetes market, acquiring glucose-monitoring technology from the Denmark-based PreciSense. Medtronic acquired PreciSense’s work on a continuous glucose monitoring technology to further its development on a closed-loop system for diabetics — essentially an “artificial pancreas” that imitates the body’s normal insulin delivery and response.

And Cleveland is studying the potential for establishing a health care cluster to encourage and concentrate development of biomedical and health care companies.

On Wednesday, we reported on a Ohio Senate Bill 119, which would require pharmacists, pharmacy interns and technicians to report mistakes related to dangerous drugs within two weeks to the state Board of Pharmacy. Not doing so would be a fourth-degree misdemeanor. And AssureRx, which is developing a genetic test for psychiatric medicines in Cincinnati has switched chief executives as it prepares for a broader commercial launch and a round of private equity funding later this year.

On Thursday, the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Steven Nissen regaled his colleagues at a three-day symposium on heart disease, telling them the “low-hanging fruit” in drug development is gone, but the government could get innovative with patent regulation to make creating novel drugs interesting again.

And on Friday, we talked with Geoff Thrope, president and chief executive of NDI Medical LLC in Highland Hills, Ohio, which recently raised $2.1 million from investors to continue to incubate neuromodulation technologies and has spun out two more technologies with their own CEOs.

[Photo by James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

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