Dive Brief Augmedics, a developer of surgical navigation technologies, will acquire the digital health assets of Surgalign Holdings for $900,000 in cash and assume unspecified liabilities after making a successful bid in a bankruptcy court auction. Surgalign, which is selling its assets under court supervision after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, said in a statement on Friday that Xtant Medical Holdings also was selected in a bidding process to acquire its hardware and biologics assets for a cash purchase price of $5 million, along with the assumption of certain liabilities. Augmedics, in a separate statement, said the purchase of Surgalign’s digital health assets and intellectual property will strengthen its augmented reality and AI portfolio. Dive Insight Deerfield, Illinois-based Surgalign filed for bankruptcy in June, a year after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company with accounting fraud. The SEC accused Surgalign, formerly RTI Surgical Holdings, of shipping future ...
A study presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 20th Annual Meeting indicated that it may be possible to use a less invasive technique to identify the gene mutations responsible for some arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) in pediatric patients. AVMs, including vein of Galen malformations, which are usually diagnosed soon after birth, are tangled blood vessels that disrupt blood flow and oxygen circulation, and are most often found in the brain and spinal cord. These vessels can rupture and cause brain hemorrhage, stroke, and brain damage for children and adults. Many complex AVMs in children are caused by a few specific gene mutations, but it’s difficult to find out which mutation is responsible (and, therefore, which treatment to use) without taking a surgical biopsy of the AVM. A surgical biopsy comes with a risk of brain bleeding. As a result, researchers in Australia opted to try using “liquid biopsy”-;taking ...
The Scleroderma Research Foundation (SRF) has announced the launch of a new clinical trial platform aimed at advancing treatments for the rare autoimmune disease of the skin and organs. Using a model created over a decade ago to accelerate oncology drug development but not previously used for autoimmune disorders, the CONQUEST platform is designed to identify agents that are ready to progress from phase 2b to phase 3 clinical trials. The initiative, conceived and led by the SRF, will initially focus on interstitial lung disease secondary to scleroderma but will be expanded in the future to address other manifestations of the disease. The first iteration, which is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, will include approximately 400 patients and will test two drugs, including one from Sanofi. The trial will measure forced vital capacity, the total volume of air that can be exhaled during a maximal ...
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in the US has awarded a $2m grant to Amygdala Neurosciences to support investigational new drug (IND) application and early development of the aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) inhibitor for the treatment of alcohol use disorder. According to the 2021 survey by the NIAAA, 29.5 million people aged 12 years and older have experienced alcohol use disorder. Current treatments include behavioural therapy, medication, support groups, and counselling. ANS-858 is an investigational selective and reversible ALDH2 inhibitor, which has been reported to reduce craving and drug-seeking behaviour in preclinical studies. Amygdala CEO Brent Blackburn said in the press release: “This award will enable the development of ANS-858 through pre-clinical evaluation required of an investigational new drug (IND) application to the FDA.” There are multiple drugs currently in development for treating alcohol use disorder. These mainly investigate the use of psychedelic compounds, including Beckly Psytech’s ...
CS Pharmaceuticals (CSP) has acquired AxeroVision for an undisclosed fee, in a move that will involve a dry eye disease (DED) candidate being transferred over to the UK-based ocular therapeutics company. CSP, which is headquartered in London but develops and commercialises treatments for eye diseases in China, will continue developing AXR-270, a selective glucocorticoid receptor agonist. The drug has been in a phase of developmental dormancy. In August 2021, AxeroVision released positive Phase II results for the candidate in 129 patients with DED with meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD). In a statement announcing the 2021 results, AxeroVision – which spun out from GSK in 2016 – said it was planning to enrol around 800 patients in a Phase III trial comparing the eye cream with a vehicle, and a new drug application/marketed authorisation application filing expected in 2024. However, the company did not issue any further updates on the drug since ...
Dive Brief Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for what it claims is the first whole blood automation device available in the U.S. The Reveos Automated Whole Blood System processes blood into platelets and other components in a single centrifugation cycle, eliminating some manual steps to separate platelets from the rest of the blood. The device can help blood centers make the process of collecting platelets from blood donations more efficient, increasing availability for people who need them for treatment, Chetan Makam, general manager of Terumo’s global blood solutions business, said in an interview. Dive Insight Platelets are used to treat trauma patients, for procedures like heart surgeries, and for patients who are undergoing chemotherapy. Demand for platelets continues to increase, Makam said. Currently, the majority of platelets available for transfusion in the U.S. come from a process called apheresis, where a donor’s ...
Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have officially identified a central conduit to obesity: fructose. While fructose’s contribution to obesity is well-known, a study published today in Philosophical Transactions aggregates a large amount of work to make a full argument for how fructose drives obesity and diseases such as diabetes and fatty liver disease. “This is an in-depth review on a hypothesis that puts nature at the center of weight gain, examining how fructose works differently than other nutrients by lowering active energy,” says Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and study lead author. “We determine a recently discovered function of fructose in survival that stores fuel in case resources become scarce. This is known as the ‘survival switch,'” he says. Fructose is the source of sweetness in fruit, but is primarily consumed in Western society as table sugar and high ...
By Tristan Manalac Monday, Quest Diagnostics launched the AD-Detect Test, a direct-to-consumer blood test designed to catch abnormal levels of the beta-amyloid protein to assess a patient’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. According to Quest, AD-Detect is the first direct-to-consumer blood-based biomarker test for Alzheimer’s disease, though the company is quick to point out that it is not a diagnostic test. “Only a physician or healthcare professional can provide an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis,” the company said in its announcement. “The risk of having Alzheimer’s disease as the underlying cause for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia should be considered in conjunction with the findings from medical and family history, physicals, nutritional deficiency biomarkers, neurological and neuropsychological examinations, and neuroimaging,” according to Quest. AD-Detect works by measuring two types of beta-amyloid biomarkers in the blood and determining the beta-amyloid 42/40 ratio, a validated tool used to assess a patient’s risk of ...
By Tristan Manalac The FDA has approved GSK’s Jemperli (dostarlimab-gxly) for the treatment of primary advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer, the company announced Monday. The label expansion covers a combination regimen of Jemperli, carboplatin and paclitaxel, followed by Jemperli as a single agent. Monday’s approval also only applies to patients who are mismatch repair deficient (dMMR), as confirmed by an FDA-approved test, or who have high microsatellite instability (MSI-H). Jemperli is the first immuno-oncology treatment and PD-1 inhibitor to be authorized for frontline use in this patient population, according to GSK. The expanded approval “redefines the treatment landscape for patients with dMMR/MSI-H primary advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer,” for whom chemotherapy alone has been the standard of care, though many patients still see disease progression, Hesham Abdullah, GSK’s senior vice president and global head of oncology development, said in a statement. Jemperli is an anti-PD-1 antibody that was first approved ...
A new study published in BMJ Global Health has revealed that over 500,000 deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted each year with the effective use of existing vaccines and continued development of new vaccines to tackle priority pathogens. The modelling study, Global and regional burden of attributable and associated bacterial antimicrobial resistance avertable by vaccination, was carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Vaccine Institute, Korea (IVI) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and become resistant to medicines. The condition has been declared by WHO as one of the top ten global threats to global public health, associated with around 4.95 million deaths globally per year. Science has been playing catch-up to mitigate AMR due to the strain that was faced by health systems worldwide throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Using ...
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