Unique obesity treatment device moving forward (Weekend Rounds)

A review of life science current events reported by MedCity News this week:

EnteroMedics expects to complete obesity device implants in US by end 2011. EnteroMedics said Monday, that it expects to implant its first patient with its obesity controlling therapy by the second quarter of the year and all implants completed by year end.

Regenerative medicine startup Juventas completes phase 1 heart failure trial. Cleveland-based Juventas’ technology, JVS-100, works by recruiting stem cells from the bone marrow to create new blood vessels. In addition to heart failure patients, the company is investigating the treatment of patients suffering from critical limb ischemia (CLI), a severe obstruction of the arteries that reduces blood flow to hands, feet or legs.

St. Jude, Medtronic offer slightly different views on JAMA article impact. Two chief executives at two of the biggest medical device companies globally offered different opinions in recent months about the impact of an article about ICDs (implanted cardioverter defibrillators), and a Department of Justice investigation into these products.

Neoprobe files SEC document to sell up to $100M in shares. Neoprobe could elect to use the proceeds from a stock sale to fill its future pipeline, Larson said. As Neoprobe stands now, the company is looking at a fairly dry period between the launches of its two lead radiopharmaceuticals.

Wikipedia website meets Ohio biotech. Why didn’t it happen earlier? Really, it’s amazing someone in the industry didn’t think of doing this earlier. Wikipedia entries are almost universally among the top of search results on their subject matter. After just two days, searches for ’Ohio bioscience sector’ on Google have the new Wikipedia page as the second most popular result.