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

Pittsburgh’s ClearCount Medical Solutions has closed its Series B funding round with the hoped-for $5 million to drive market penetration and R&D for its systems that use radio-frequency identification technology to detect and count sponges used in operations.

Mobile cardiac monitoring firm CardioNet Inc. logs a win in a shareholder lawsuit accusing it, its CEO and CFO of misleading investors over its prospects for high Medicare reimbursement.CardioNet Inc. (NSDQ:BEAT) won a lawsuit filed against it by shareholders last year, accusing the mobile cardiac monitoring firm of misleading investors about Medicare reimbursement.Judge Stewart Dalzell [...]

TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals has completed a $32 million Series C fund-raise that the company will use to push its cancer drug through a phase 2a study.The Malvern, Pennsylvania, company’s lead drug candidate, TL32711, is currently in a phase 1 study in patients with solid tumors, according to a statement from TetraLogic. The trial started in January.The [...]

Fibrocell Science Inc. has raised $2.7 million to advance its skin treatment that uses a patient’s own cells to smooth out wrinkles, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The company’s technology is based on fibroblasts, cells that aid in the formation of connective tissue. The company removes a small sample of a [...]

David Anderson says the road to developing an artificial spinal disc nucleus is littered with “spectacular failures.”But that doesn’t deter Anderson or his company, Philadelphia-based Gentis, from trying to be the first to get a disc nucleus replacement device for the lower spine on the U.S. market. The nucleus pulposus is the jelly-like substance found [...]

Gemin X Pharmaceuticals has closed an $8 million Series E round of funding that it will use to prepare for Phase 3 clinical trials of its lung cancer drug.The Malvern, Pennsylvania-based company is in the midst of a Phase 2b trial of its lead candidate, obatoclax, which is intended for the treatment of extensive-stage small-cell [...]

UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) health information technology subsidiary Ingenix has reached an agreement to acquire a Pennsylvania-based compliance consulting company for hospitals.Ingenix didn’t disclose the price for Newton Square, Pennsylvania-based Executive Health Resources in a statement, but a Bloomberg report last week put the figure at about $1.5 billion.The deal fits with UnitedHealth’s strategy of [...]

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 [...]

Drug reformulation company iCeutica has raised nearly $2.6 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.iCeutica uses its “SoluMatrix” technology to reformulate drugs for pharmaceutical clients. Companies typically reformulate drugs in order to protect patents that are in danger of expiring or to introduce a new delivery method, such as administering the drugs via [...]

Generic and specialty drugmaker Milan Inc. (NYSE: MYL) has agreed to buy injectable drug company Bioniche Pharma Holdings Ltd. for $550 million in cash, gaining the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Milan entrance to the North American injectables market.Bioniche Pharma is a global specialty sterile injectable pharmaceutical company based in Galway, Ireland with a majority of its sales [...]