Kidney failure treatment startup Phraxis is seeking $1 million of which $200,000 has been raised according to a recent regulatory filing.Earlier in an interview with MedCity News, Phraxis CEO Michael Kallok had said that the company intends to raise $5 million. After the filing, he noted that the $1 million is a bridge financing and [...]

The ongoing battle to repeal the medical device tax continues with the latest campaign being led by House GOP freshman Todd Rokita from Indiana.Rokita, along with 74 cosigners, sent a letterMonday to Speaker John Boehner that asked him to bring a bill to the floor that would essentially kill the $2.2 billion annual tax to [...]

The University of Minnesota announced Thursday that it has granted an exclusive license to a San Francisco pharmaceutical company that will commercialize a cyanide-poisoning antidote researchers have developed.Vytacera Pharma Inc. will develop and marketSulfanegen, a compound that can be administered by first responders to victims of smoke inhalation or a large-scale terrorist attack. Current treatments [...]

Health and wellness necessarily imply a proactive approach and not a reactive one.Eager to reflect that focus, Allina Hospitals and Clinics, one of Minnesota’s top health systems, is undergoing a name makeover, reports the Star Tribune. From now on the health system will be known as Allina Health.The name change is part of an overall [...]

As the state of Minnesota ramps up its efforts to design a public health insurance exchange by 2013, the private version of that concept is gaining traction among Minnesota employers who are seeking ways to manage rising costs of healthcare.Minnesota-based insurance provider Medica announced Wednesday as of the beginning of the year, 22 Minnesota employers [...]

Raising money for a medical device startup can be incredibly challenging, but serial entrepreneur Michael Berman financed his latest venture MikrobEX in a rather clever fashion.He wanted to raise $5 million and also take advantage of the Minnesota Angel Investment Tax Credit program. But the angel program puts a cap on the amount of money [...]

Orasi Medical, a University of Minnesota software startup that was marketing its technology to drug companies,has closed its doors.That is an astonishing collapse for a company that had inked licensing deals with the pharma giants like Novartis, been named by Red Herring magazine to its list of Top 100 private companies globally and raised at [...]

Orthopedics medical device startup OrthoCor Medical is getting ready to hire at least two new sales and marketing people.The money will come from a $3 million angel financing round the company hopes to close in May, said CEO John Dinusson. OrthoCor filed its intent to raise $3 million in a regulatory filing in June.“We are [...]

That some academics don’t necessarily make good business executives is a well-worn fact. And it’s not uncommon that founders — researchers or otherwise — often step aside, or are sometimes jettisoned in the interest of the firm.But the question is how should founders behave when they are cut off from the company they created? Is [...]

Medical device design usually involves the use of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, or CAD/CAM environments. The process is long and iterative.Now, two professors at the University of Minnesota have come up with a 3-D visualization device that aims to revolutionize how medical devices are designed and tested, thereby shortening R&D cycles and the costs [...]