Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Twin Star Medical is moving to the Excelen orthopedic and bone research center in downtown Minneapolis. The startup, currently based at the University Enterprise Laboratories in St. Paul, will lease a 4,000 square feet of space in the building located next to Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), beginning in November.

The Dutch parent of Philips Healthcare has joined a $250 million venture fund that will invest in innovative early and growth-stage healthcare technology companies in Europe and the United States. Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG) has made an undisclosed “minority share” investment in Gilde Healthcare III, which will invest in home healthcare solutions, sleep improvement techniques, image-guided interventions and therapies, and clinical decision support.

The University of Minnesota’s Biomedical Discovery District has the land. It has the money. Now it will get some serious validation.Next month, the university’s medical school will host the annual conference of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a chance for wonks in economic development, innovation and technology transfer to swap best practices and [...]

Credit for this blog post should really go to William Hoffman, an editor and writer with the University of Minnesota medical school and author of “The Stem Cell Dilemma.”Hoffman e-mailed me after reading my post on how the Democratic candidates for governor rank on biosciences. He specifically focused on the idea that Minnesota’s high taxes [...]

Updated 12:10 p.m.Infection prevention and decontamination technologies maker STERIS Corp. (NYSE: STE) lost $45 million in its fiscal first quarter, thanks to setting aside $110 million to cover a rebate program in a bid to hold on to customers of its flagship sterilization technology.AdvertisementThe Mentor, Ohio, company said more customers than expected may use rebates [...]

MidTown Tech Park — a proposed office, laboratory and research redevelopment project in the middle of Cleveland’s developing Health-Tech Corridor — has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from Ohio’s Job Ready Site program, enabling the project to start.It was the final financing piece needed by Streetsboro, Ohio, developer Geis Cos. and the Coyne family [...]

The Cleveland Clinic broke ground today for a $75 million building to house the hospital’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute and Cleveland Clinic Laboratories.The project that is expected to improve the Clinic’s medical testing capabilities and create hundreds of jobs has changed significantly since it was first proposed in February 2009.Then, the project was an [...]

Devicor Medical Products Group LLC, the medical device holding company that bought the breast-care business of Johnson & Johnson‘s Ethicon Endo-Surgery two weeks ago, has raised $151.5 million.Devicor Medical in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin raised the money from seven investors, beginning on July 9, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. Nearly $3.4 million [...]

Contract product developer and manufacturer New Product Innovations this morning opened a gateway for U.S. medical device makers that want to do business in China.As the U.S. branch of the Shanghai Pudong Medical Device Trade Association, the Columbus, Ohio company will usher investors and manufacturers into the WaiGaoQiao Free Trade Zone, the largest free [...]

As nurses and Twin Cities hospitals resume contract negotiations today, Moody’s Investor Service lobbed in one more thing for both sides to think about.The company warned Monday that an open-ended strike by 12,000 nurses belonging to the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) could damage the hospitals credit rating, making it harder and more expensive for hospitals [...]