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Mayo Clinic expert answers your questions on swine fluFind out what you need to know as a Mayo Clinic infectious disease expert answers key questions.

LANTHEUS MEDICAL IMAGING, INC. ACQUIRES U.S., CANADIAN and AUSTRALIAN RIGHTS TO VASOVIST®

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LANTHEUS MEDICAL IMAGING, INC. ACQUIRES U.S., CANADIAN and AUSTRALIAN RIGHTS TO MS-325 (formerly marketed as VASOVIST®, gadofosveset trisodium, by Bayer Schering Pharma) FROM EPIX PHARMACEUTICALS

Acquisition of Novel MRA Contrast Agent for Peripheral Vascular Imaging
Expands Company Product Offerings and Supports Future Growth

N. BILLERICA, Mass. (April 7, 2009) – Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc., a worldwide leader in diagnostic imaging, announced today that it has acquired from EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:EPIX) the U.S., Canadian, and Australian rights to MS-325 (formerly marketed as VASOVIST®, gadofosveset trisodium, by Bayer Schering Pharma), a novel magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) agent. In December 2008, EPIX received U.S. Food and Drug Administration marketing approval for MS-325 to evaluate aortoiliac occlusive disease (AIOD) in adults with known or suspected peripheral vascular disease. Currently, there are no other imaging agents approved for MRA in the U.S.

The acquisition of MS-325 further builds on Lantheus’ diagnostic imaging product portfolio and expands the company’s presence to the radiology market.  Under the terms of the agreement, Lantheus acquired the U.S. (including Puerto Rico), Canadian, and Australian rights to MS-325 from EPIX. EPIX will continue to own European and other ex-U.S. rights for the imaging agent. Lantheus is planning to launch MS-325 under a different name before the year-end.

“The acquisition of MS-325 reinforces our growth strategy to continue to bring to market breakthrough new imaging tools.  MS-325 fits well within our current product portfolio of leading contrast imaging agents. As a first-in-class contrast agent, MS-325 provides a true advance in vascular imaging, and may make it possible for physicians to detect peripheral vascular disease differently than X-ray angiography, which is invasive. We are pleased with this important acquisition and look forward to making this diagnostic tool available to physicians to improve diagnosis and patient management,” said Don Kiepert, president and CEO of Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc.

“We are proud to have completed this important transaction with Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc., a global leader with more than 50 years of experience in the diagnostic imaging space,” said Elkan Gamzu, Ph.D., president and CEO of EPIX. “We believe that Lantheus is the ideal company to bring this product to market. Under Lantheus’ leadership, MS-325 is well-positioned to become a solid market leader in the field of vascular imaging.  Lantheus’ commitment to MS-325 also serves as a strong endorsement of the product’s diagnostic value in improving the ability to visualize the human vascular system.”

About MS-325

MS-325 is an injectable intravascular contrast agent designed to provide improved imaging of the vascular system through magnetic resonance angiography imaging (MRA). MS-325 has been approved for marketing in the United States and in 37countries outside the United States, including Canada, Australia, all 27 member states of the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Turkey, Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Ukraine. Global marketing rights (outside the U.S., Canada, and Australia) to MS-325 which were held by Bayer Schering Pharma until March 1, 2009 have been transferred to EPIX.

WARNING: NEPHROGENIC SYSTEMIC FIBROSIS (NSF) See full prescribing information for complete boxed warning  Gadolinium-based contrast agents increase the risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) in patients with: acute or chronic severe renal insufficiency (glomerular filtration rate <30 mL/min/1.73m2), or acute renal insufficiency of any severity due to the hepato-renal syndrome or in the perioperative liver transplantation period. In these patients, avoid use of gadolinium-based contrast agents unless the diagnostic information is essential and not available with non-contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). NSF may result in fatal or debilitating systemic fibrosis affecting the skin, muscle, and internal organs. Screen all patients for renal dysfunction by obtaining a history and/or laboratory tests. When administering a gadolinium-based contrast agent, do not exceed the recommended dose and allow a sufficient period of time for elimination of the agent from the body prior to any re-administration.

no MRI for nailgun victim

Detectives said the nails, which measure up to 85mm long, were fired into his head by a high-powered nailgun.

 

full story

update: Siemens Employee blows the whislte on the company.

The federal raid by agents from the Department of Defense (DoD) on Siemens Healthcare’s facility in Malvern, Pa., appears to stem from a whistleblower lawsuit reagarding the company’s pricing of medical imaging equipment in contracts with the federal government.

The lawsuit was filed under the Federal False Claims Act by William A. Thomas, an executive with Siemens who also worked for a company that bought equipment from it as well as a company it acquired, according to thePhiladelphia Business Journal.

The suit accuses the healthcare division of Siemens of giving corporate customers of its medical imaging equipment bigger discounts than it gave the federal government while assuring the government that it was getting the best discounts Siemens offered, the Journal reported.

The case was initially a civil suit filed in 2004 in U.S. District Court in the Virgin Islands and has subsequently been amended. 

In early April, Siemens won a $267 million contract to supply radiology systems, subsystems and components on behalf of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies. 

On Wednesday, Lance Longwell, director of public relations at Siemens, acknowledged that the “search was in connection with an investigation of a Siemens contract with the Department of Defense.”

However, in regards to the unfolding specifics of the case, Longwell said that it is not Siemens policy to comment on pending litigation, according to an email response received this morning. Source

DoD agents raid Siemens Healthcare offices MALVERN, Pa

APRIL 22, 2009 | SPECIAL EDITION Cardiovascular Business | Portals | Subscribe | Contact Us Breaking News DoD agents raid Siemens Healthcare offices MALVERN, Pa.—The criminal investigation arm of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) raided Siemens Healthcare offices in Malvern, Pa., this morning to secure workstations, and seek out records related to several military contracts. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service appears to be focused on medical imaging contracts that the company has with the DoD. In early April, Siemens won a $267 million contract to supply radiology systems, subsystems and components on behalf of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies. At approximately 3:00pm today, the federal agents were seen loading large white file boxes into a van, and the agents confirmed that the boxes contained seized records—both computerized and paper records. Lance Longwell, director of public relations at Siemens, said that the search focused on one floor on one building of Siemens’ Malvern campus, and the company asked its employees who work near the area subject to the search to leave for the remainder of the day and to return tomorrow for a regular workday. Special Agent-in-Charge Ed Bradley confirmed to the Philadelphia Inquirer that the search is part of an ongoing investigation but is not commenting on the nature of the probe. He said agents will remain on site “as long as it takes,” indicating that the all-day search will continue as documents are reviewed. Siemens said it “will continue to cooperate fully with the government’s investigation.” Further updates will be forthcoming. Cardiovascular Business CURRENT ISSUE • View Digital Edition • Search Articles • Subscribe • Advertise • Search Companies • Search Technologies • White Papers

http://epubs.democratprinting.com/publication/?i=13233&pre=1

Harvard Medical Students Rebel Against Pharma-Ties

200 Harvard Medical School STUDENTS are confronting the administration demanding an end to pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom.
A front page report in the Business section of the New York Times should bestir some of Harvard Medical School alumni.  200 Harvard Medical School STUDENTS are confronting the administration demanding an end to pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom.  

“The students say they worry that pharmaceutical industry scandals in recent years – including some criminal convictions, billions of dollars in fines, proof of bias in research and publishing and false marketing claims – have cast a bad light on the medical profession. And they criticize Harvard as being less vigilant than other leading medical schools in monitoring potential financial conflicts by faculty members.” 

Harvard received the lowest grade–an F--from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money. Harvard Medical School’s peers received much higher grades, ranging from the A for the University of Pennsylvania, to B’s received by Stanford, Columbia and New York University, to the C for Yale. 

The revolt began when a first year medical student “grew wary” when a professor promoted cholesterol drugs and “seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.” He later discovered that the professor, a full-time Harvard Medical faculty member, was a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including manufacturers of cholesterol drugs.

Another first year student said:  “Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.”

The fact is, no one is keeping track of faculty income from industry, or covert marketing pitches infiltrating the classroom: “The school said it was unable to provide annual measures of the money flow to its faculty..”  One Harvard professor’s disclosure in class listed 47 company affiliations.

On one side of the confrontation: the administration and most of the faculty who admittedly loath to “tighten the spigot” of cash from industry: 

“school officials see corporate support for their faculty as all the more crucial, as the university endowment has lost 22 percent of its value since last July and the recession has caused philanthropic contributors to retrench.”

An outspoken supporter of ties between industry and academia–who served on numerous pharmaceutical advisory boards, Professor Thomas Stossel who is unconcerned about industry influence. He views industry support as “a huge opportunity we ought to mine.” A smaller faction of students calls for “continued interaction between medicine and industry at Harvard.”  They are led by Vijay Yanamadala, 22.

On the other side: students such as Kirsten Austad, 24, a first-year Harvard Medical student who is one of the movement’s leaders, who said: ”Harvard needs to live up to its name.  We are really being indoctrinated into a field of medicine that is becoming more and more commercialized.”

The students are joined by Dr. Marcia Angell, a faculty member and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine who has vigorously advocated for an end to liaisons between academia and Big Pharma: “Too many medical schools have struck a ‘Faustian bargain’ with pharmaceutical companies.  If a school like Harvard can’t behave itself, who can?” source

 

 

 

10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About

 

Youtube – You know that site with videos and all. Yeah! It turns out that its quite popular and you happen to visit and use it quite often. Instead of just searching and playing here are some top Youtube URL tricks that you should know about:

1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!

 

 

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Autism and extraordinary ability

There is strong evidence for a link between genius and autism. In the first of three articles about the brain this week, we ask how that link works, and whether “neurotypicals” can benefit from the knowledge

Ronald Grant Archive

Sources and Resources

(Inclusion in this list does not indicate endorsement.)

Brain
A Guide to Brain Anatomy, Function and Symptoms
Guide to Brain Anatomy, Function and Symptoms: The Cerebellum And The Brain Stem
Anatomy of the Brain
Brain Function: Language
Brain Functions and Map
Broca/Wernicke image
Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area, And Other Language Processing Areas In The Brain (1)
Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area, And Other Language Processing Areas In The Brain (2)
Functional Divisions of the Cerebral Cortex
Glossary of Brain Regions
Glossary of Neurology Terms
Hypothalamus
Limbic System
What is the Cerebellum?

Autism
Autism and the Cerebellum: A Neurophysiological Basis for Intervention
Autism Fact Sheet (NINDS)
Autism Fact Sheet (Child Development Institute)
Autism For Kids
Autism Spectrum Disorders (Pervasive Developmental Disorders)(NIMH)
Autistic Brain Has Difficulty Coordinating
“A growing number of scientists believe autism may be caused by a lack of coordination in the brain.
‘Some people think that autism is a disruption of social function,’ says Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ‘But I think it’s much more widespread. It’s a disruption of many kinds of behaviors that require good cortical coordination.’”
Clue to autism revealed
“Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have found that the areas of the brain responsible for emotion and memory are abnormally large in boys with autism.”
Current Research on Autism (Child Development Institute) 

Autism is one of five pervasive developmental disorders of the brain causing problems in the areas of social interaction, communication, behavior and oftentimes moderate mental retardation. Autism appears in one of every 150 births and has a growth rate of 10 to 17 percent each year.

Individuals with autism are said to process incoming information differently than others, focusing primarily on the details of an interaction or environment. Studies show a series of abnormalities taking place in the autistic brain. 
Autism can occur within a broad functional spectrum, with low functioning abilities on one side and high functioning autistic abilities on the other. Individuals within the higher functioning range have average to above-average intelligence and can function within a normal lifestyle.

THAT genius is unusual goes without saying. But is it so unusual that it requires the brains of those that possess it to be unusual in others ways, too? A link between artistic genius on the one hand and schizophrenia and manic-depression on the other, is widely debated. However another link, between savant syndrome and autism, is well established. It is, for example, the subject of films such as “Rain Man”, illustrated above.

A study published this week by Patricia Howlin of King’s College, London, reinforces this point. It suggests that as many as 30% of autistic people have some sort of savant-like capability in areas such as calculation or music. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that some of the symptoms associated with autism, including poor communication skills and an obsession with detail, are also exhibited by many creative types, particularly in the fields of science, engineering, music, drawing and painting. Indeed, there is now a cottage industry in re-interpreting the lives of geniuses in the context of suggestions that they might belong, or have belonged, on the “autistic spectrum”, as the range of syndromes that include autistic symptoms is now dubbed.

So what is the link? And can an understanding of it be used to release flashes of genius in those whose brains are, in the delightfully condescending term used by researchers in the area, “neurotypical”? Those were the questions addressed by papers (one of them Dr Howlin’s) published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The society, Britain’s premier scientific club and the oldest scientific body in the world, produces such transactions from time to time, to allow investigators in particular fields to chew over the state of the art. The latest edition is the outcome of a conference held jointly with the British Academy (a similar, though younger, organisation for the humanities and social sciences) last September.

A spectrum of belief

A standard diagnosis of autism requires three things to be present in an individual. Two of these three, impairments in social interaction and in communication with other people, are the results of autists lacking empathy or, in technical jargon, a “theory of mind”. In other words they cannot, as even fairly young neurotypicals can, put themselves in the position of another being and ask themselves what that other is thinking. The third criterion, however, is that a person has what are known as restrictive and repetitive behaviours and interests, or RRBI, in the jargon.

Until recently, the feeling among many researchers was that the first two features were crucial to someone becoming a savant. The idea was that mental resources which would have been used for interaction and communication could be redeployed to develop expertise in some arbitrary task. Now, though, that consensus is shifting. Several of the volume’s authors argue that it is the third feature, RRBI, that permits people to become savants.

Francesca Happé of King’s College, London, is one of them. As she observes, obsessional interests and repetitive behaviours would allow someone to practice, albeit inadvertently, whichever skill they were obsessed by. Malcolm Gladwell, in a book called “Outliers” which collated research done on outstanding people, suggested that anyone could become an expert in anything by practising for 10,000 hours. It would not be hard for an autistic individual to clock up that level of practice for the sort of skills, such as mathematical puzzles, that many neurotypicals would rapidly give up on.

Many, but not all. Dr Happé has drawn on a study of almost 13,000 individual twins to show that childhood talent in fields such as music and art is often associated with RRBIs, even in those who are not diagnosed as classically autistic. She speculates that the abilities of savants in areas that neurotypicals tend to find pointless or boring may result from an ability to see differences where a neurotypical would see only similarities. As she puts it, “the child with autism who would happily spend hours spinning coins, or watching drops of water fall from his fingers, might be considered a connoisseur, seeing minute differences between events that others regard as pure repetition.”

Simon Baron-Cohen, a doyen of the field who works at Cambridge University, draws similar conclusions. He suggests the secret of becoming a savant is “hyper-systematising and hyper-attention to detail”. But he adds sensory hypersensitivity to the list. His team have shown one example of this using what is known as the Freiburg visual acuity and contrast test, which asks people to identify the gap in a letter “c” presented in four different orientations. Those on the autistic spectrum do significantly better at this than do neurotypicals. That might help explain Dr Happé’s observations about coins and raindrops.

Insight, too, is given by autists themselves. Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She also writes about her experience of being autistic. As she describes in the volume, one of the differences she perceives between her experience and that of most neurotypicals is that she thinks in images. She says her mind is like an internet search engine that searches for photographs. To form concepts, she sorts these pictures into categories. She does not, however, claim that all autistic people think like this. To the contrary, she describes two other sorts: pattern thinkers who excel at maths and music, and verbal specialists who are good at talking and writing, but lack visual skills. The latter might not qualify as autistic under a traditional diagnosis, but slip into the broader autistic spectrum.

The question of how the autistic brain differs physically from that of neurotypicals was addressed by Manuel Casanova of the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. Dr Casanova has spent many years dissecting both. His conclusion is that the main difference is in the structure of the small columns of nerve cells that are packed together to form the cerebral cortex. The cortical columns of those on the autistic spectrum are narrower than those of neurotypicals, and their cells are organised differently.

The upshot of these differences is that the columns in an autistic brain seem to be more connected than normal with their close neighbours, and less connected with their distant ones. Though it is an interpretative stretch, that pattern of connection might reduce a person’s ability to generalise (since disparate data are less easily integrated) and increase his ability to concentrate (by drawing together similar inputs).

Rain and sunshine

Given such anatomical differences, then, what hope is there for the neurotypical who would like to be a savant? Some, possibly. There are examples of people suddenly developing extraordinary skills in painting and music in adult life as a result of brain damage caused by accidents or strokes. That, perhaps, is too high a price to pay. But Allan Snyder of the University of Sydney has been able to induce what looks like a temporary version of this phenomenon using magnetism.

Dr Snyder argues that savant skills are latent in everyone, but that access to them is inhibited in non-savants by other neurological processes. He is able to remove this inhibition using a technique called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Applying a magnetic field to part of the brain disrupts the electrical activity of the nerve cells for a few seconds. Applying such a field repeatedly can have effects that last for an hour or so. The technique has been approved for the treatment of depression, and is being tested against several other conditions, including Parkinson’s disease and migraines. Dr Snyder, however, has found that stimulating an area called the left anterior temporal lobe improves people’s ability to draw things like animals and faces from memory. It helps them, too, with other tasks savants do famously well—proofreading, for example, and estimating the number of objects in a large group, such as a pile of match sticks. It also reduces “false” memories (savants tend to remember things literally, rather than constructing a mnemonic narrative and remembering that).

There are, however, examples of people who seem very neurotypical indeed achieving savant-like skills through sheer diligence. Probably the most famous is that of London taxi drivers, who must master the Knowledge—ie, the location of 25,000 streets, and the quickest ways between them—to qualify for a licence.

The expert here is Eleanor Maguire of University College, London, who famously showed a few years ago that the shape of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in long-term learning, changes in London cabbies. Dr Maguire and her team have now turned their attention to how cabbies learn the Knowledge.

The prodigious geographical knowledge of the average cabbie is, indeed, savant-like. But Dr Maguire recently found that it comes at a cost. Cabbies, on average, are worse than random control subjects and—horror—also worse than bus drivers, at memory tests such as word-pairing. Surprisingly, that is also true of their general spatial memory. Nothing comes for nothing, it seems, and genius has its price.

Savant syndrome, then, is a case where the politically correct euphemism “differently abled” has real meaning. The conclusion that should be drawn, perhaps, is not that neurotypicals should attempt to ape savants, but that savants—even those who are not geniuses—should be welcomed for what they are, and found a more honoured place in society.

Memory Cannabinoids & hippocampus neurogenesis

The hippocampal dentate gyrus in the adult mammalian brain contains neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/PCs) capable of generating new neurons, i.e., neurogenesis. Most drugs of abuse examined to date decrease adult hippocampal neurogenesis, but the effects of cannabis (marijuana or cannabinoids) on hippocampal neurogenesis remain unknown. This study aimed at investigating the potential regulatory capacity of the potent synthetic cannabinoid HU210 on hippocampal neurogenesis and its possible correlation with behavioral change. We show that both embryonic and adult rat hippocampal NS/PCs are immunoreactive for CB1 cannabinoid receptors, indicating that cannabinoids could act on CB1 receptors to regulate neurogenesis. This hypothesis is supported by further findings that HU210 promotes proliferation, but not differentiation, of cultured embryonic hippocampal NS/PCs likely via a sequential activation of CB1 receptors, G_i/o proteins, and ERK signaling. Chronic, but not acute, HU210 treatment promoted neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus of adult rats and exerted anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects. X-irradiation of the hippocampus blocked both the neurogenic and behavioral effects of chronic HU210 treatment, suggesting that chronic HU210 treatment produces anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects likely via promotion of hippocampal neurogenesis.

 

The fMRI images revealed that the prefrontal cortex, which controls the suppression and retrieval of memories processed by the hippocampus, showed abnormal activation in the patients with stress-related disorders compared to the healthy controls. During the memory suppression phase of the test, patients with stress-related disorders showed greater activation in the hippocampus, suggesting that insufficient activation of the prefrontal cortex could be the basis for inadequate suppression of unwanted traumatic memories stored in the hippocampus.

“These data suggest that the mechanism for memory suppression is dysfunctional in patients with stress-related disorders primarily because of an alteration of the prefrontal cortex,” Dr. Agarwal said. “These patients often complain of poor memory, which might in part be attributed to this altered circuitry,” she added.

According to Dr. Agarwal, fMRI is an important tool in understanding the neurobiological basis of psychiatric disorders and in identifying imaging markers to psychiatric disease, helping clinicians target specific parts of the brain for treatment.

 

For patient-friendly information on fMRI, visit RadiologyInfo.org.

 

• Mechanisms of Memory Suppression in Stress-related Psychiatric Disorders: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Study

http://digg.com/d1oYVX

NEXTRAY Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI)

Company: NextRay
School: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Core team members: Etta Pisano, DJ Connor, Zhong Zhong, Christopher ParhamConcept: Standard X-ray two-dimensional imaging delivers a significant amount of radiation to the patient. Even a single X-ray exposure may contribute to cancer and affect fetal development. NextRay is developing a relatively inexpensive imaging machine that uses a new type of 2D imaging, Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI), which produces highly detailed images, can image soft tissues, and exposes the patient to less than 1% of the radiation dosage of X-ray machines.

“The NextRay team is coming to Rice fresh off of a win at the Carolina Challenge, where it took home the $15,000 first prize award for the commercial track,” says interim COO John Lerch. “[The co-founders] have built a prototype DEI device using an off-the-shelf X-ray tube and detector. Previously, the scientific community was skeptical that DEI images could be produced without the use of a large synchrotron facility, which costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to build.”

Timeline: The company plans to acquire funding and a manufacturing partner within the next two years, hold clinical trials in year three, and launch full-scale production and distribution in year four.

 

 

It hopes for an acquisition soon after. “We have primarily been speaking with angel investors, and our discussions have been very positive and encouraging to date,” Lerch says. “For the most part they are continuing to look at deals and perform due diligence. Of course, we won’t be able to say anything for sure until we have money in the bank.” -Rose Fox