06.03.10
Secant Medical Expands Manufacturing Capability
Secant Medical is investing in its future.
The company has added a 40,000-square-foot facility in Quakertown, Pa., to its manufacturing operations. The new facility is just six miles from the firm’s headquarters in Perkasie, Pa.
Secant executives said the new facility was added to support current and future business growth in tissue engineering and transcatheter technologies. They predict the total market for tissue engineering—including heart valve repair and replacement; musculoskeletal bone and ligament repair and replacement; and urologic bladder slings—will surpass $11.5 billion by 2016.
“We are monitoring the healthy market growth of transcatheter technology for minimally invasive surgical procedures, which is driving an increased need for biomedical textiles,” said Karen West, general manager of the company’s Advanced Technology and Materials Group. “While we see an upward trend in the market, we are well aware of the challenges that device manufacturers face from healthcare reform and other events. We must carefully balance these market dynamics in our long term planning, particularly as it pertains to our clients’ needs.”
And those needs most likely will include bone regeneration and ligament repair, as an aging world population seeks relief from such conditions as osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease. Researchers are developing ways to regenerate bone and cartilage using stem cells and a protein called NELL 1.
Bone Biologics Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., received a patent in March for a process that uses the NELL 1 protein to form cartilage. The technology is subject to review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; it has not been approved for use in humans.
Last fall, researchers at the University of Michigan announced that they had grown and repaired knee ligaments in rats from bone marrow stem cells harvested from the rats’ own bones. The researchers, according to published reports, tissue-engineered an advanced graft that includes an elastic ligament section in the center to accommodate joint motion and bone portions on the ends for more effective integration and attachment to the native bone of the injured knee.
Besides adding to the company’s manufacturing capabilities, Secant executives added to the company’s management team (see People News, page 72) and redesigned the firm’s methodology for custom-developing and making medical device products. They named the redesigned methodology the Integrated Product Development Process.
“The resulting integrated process better leverages our continuum of services at every stage of the client’s development path,” West explained. “It’s a smarter, more streamlined approach to apply the quality, collaboration, and scientific support we bring to the table.”
Steve Chadwick, Secant’s president and CEO, said the revamped product development process allows the company to remain closely aligned with clients’ development requirements, from concept to commercialization.
Secant Medical provides design, development and custom manufacturing services for biomedical textiles.
Work Progresses on New SSF Manufacturing Plant
When executives at Specialty Silicone Fabricators Inc. announced the construction of a manufacturing facility in the fall of 2008, they estimated the new building would take about two years to complete. As long as Mother Nature cooperated, that is.
Naturally, she didn’t.
“The rains did a nice job on us in January,” Kevin Meyer, Specialty Silicone’s president, recently told The Tribune of San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Those rains (as well as some other unforeseen obstacles) have pushed back moving day for the new building. Though the old structure has been demolished and the new building’s foundation has been laid, executives do not expect the facility to be ready until the first quarter of 2011.
Located on the company’s existing campus in Paso Robles, Calif., the new building will include clean rooms with special walls and flooring to reduce dust and keep products contaminant-free. “The clean rooms cost more than the construction,” Meyer noted in the Tribune article. He declined to provide figures, however.
The new two-story building will house administrative offices on the second floor and manufacturing operations on the first floor. It is designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) standards, incorporating such “green initiatives” as energy savings, water efficiency, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. While the new building will enable the company to meet a growing demand for silicone medical device components, it also will help the firm expand its manufacturing capabilities to include thermoplastics and combination products, executives said. “In the last few years we’d been thinking ‘where would we expand?’ ” Meyer explained. “We had several existing customers ask us, because they’re having problems with their existing [thermoplastics] vendors.”
Meyer intends to hire additional workers once the new facility is up and running. The company, which makes long-term medical silicone implants such as gastric bands and pacemaker leads, employs 220 people. In addition to its Paso Robles facility, the firm has manufacturing operations in Elk Rapids, Mich., and Tustin, Calif.
New Injection Molding System Boosts Firm’s Production Victory has arrived at Juno Inc.
The Anoka, Minn.-based contract manufacturer and plastic injection molder has added an ENGEL victory combi molding machine in order to boost its multi-shot molding capability. The 200-ton injection molding machine will be used to produce more than 10 million multi-component medical parts per year for an unidentified customer, Larry Johnson, Juno’s production manager, said in published reports.
Company officials looked at molding machines from about six different manufacturers before settling on the system from ENGEL, a worldwide manufacturer of injection molding machines. Juno’s product needs, according to executives, included an intricate spin stack stool and specialty molding in a white room operation.
The victory combi molding machine from ENGEL offers tie bar-less clamping with barrier-free access to the molding area, unrestricted use of the platen service and platen parallelism for precision requirements. The system features an L-shaped configuration that positions the injection units at a 90-degree angle to each other, ENGEL officials said.
Juno executives are hoping to add another two presses this year to the company’s complement of 30.
Besides enabling the company to increase the production of molded components, the Engel victory system could open up Juno to opportunities in multi-component molding and micomolding. The firm entered the micromolding market last fall with the purchase of a machine from Sodick Plustech, a Japanese molding machine manufacturer. The machine from Sodick is specially designed to mold tiny components; it features a V-line plunger that provides outstanding shot-to-shot repeatability (according to Juno executives), small shot barrels starting at 2.0 cc max, and injection speeds with 343 MPa (or 50,000 psi) injection pressure.
Though it serves the defense, aerospace, industrial and consumer industries, Juno specializes in the manufacture of multi-component parts and micromolded products for the medical sector.
N.C. Firm Expands Medical Molding Offerings
Core Technology Molding Group LLC is eyeing up more medical molding customers.
The Greensboro, N.C.-based plastic products manufacturer has invested more than $1 million in material handling equipment, injection molding presses and its clean room. The firm added two new e-max injection molding presses from ENGEL—a worldwide manufacturer of injection molding machines—to its Class 100,000 clean room in March. The presses are 110 tons and 200 tons.
ENGEL’s e-max molding presses are fully electric, high performance injection units with peak pressures of up to 2,800 bar and up to 450 millimeters per second, according to data from the Austrian firm. The presses join a 60-ton ENGEL e-motion press that Core Technology officials had installed previously in the 1,500 square-foot clean room. ENGEL’s e-motion presses offer shorter dry-cycle times and shorter cycle times compared with hydraulic machines. The presses are available in the clamp force range from 550 kN to 2.800 kN. In the lower clamp range (up to 1500 kN), the machines are tie-barless; in the higher range they have tie-bars.
Core Technology’s investment in its molding equipment and clean room will enable the firm to produce parts for two new programs at Bausch & Lomb Inc. as well as parts for other medical products, Geoff Foster, Core’s president and CEO, said in published reports. Bausch & Lomb is Core’s largest customer; it supplies the eye care giant with parts for cataract and vitreoretinal surgery products.
Core Technology operates 25 molding presses and employs 85 people. The firm serves the medical device, automotive, electronics, industrial and transportation industries, among others. The company does not release earnings reports, though executives have said they expect sales to be 40 percent higher this year compared with 2009.
Biotech in Brief
United BioSource Corporation, a Bethesda, Md.-based firm that partners with medical device and biopharmaceutical manufacturers to market their products, has opened an office in Tokyo, Japan. The new office is being led by Kumpei Kobayashi, a pharmaceutical industry veteran with more than 20 years of product development experience, and David Miller, M.D., a member of United BioSource’s management team who has served as a scientific leader on several Pan-Asian clinical studies. Company executives said they opened the new office to better serve the Asia-Pacific region… The U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration has awarded a $5 million grant to BioOhio and its partners to implement the Ohio Bioscience Industry Workforce Preparedness project. The three-year project will provide training to help 660 displaced or underemployed workers in declining industries become better equipped for careers in the Buckeye State’s bioscience industry. Forty incumbent workers will receive more advanced training that will enable them to assume higher-level jobs, creating new entry-level opportunities for the state’s unemployed residents…Biomedical research funding in Florida is in jeopardy due to the state’s $3 billion budget deficit. The state Senate’s proposed budget includes $52.2 million for two research grant organizations: The James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program and the Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program. The House fiscal plan, however, earmarks just $2.2 million for the King Biomedical Research Program. Proponents of the funding say the cut could delay important new discoveries and endangers Florida’s competitive edge in biomedical research…Joseph C. Cook Jr., founder and board chairman of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc. (in Cambridge, Mass.), has been elected to the Tennessee Biotech Association’s board of directors. Robert V. Acuff, Ph.D., association chairman, said Cook will be a “strong voice on the board” and play a vital role in helping to foster, develop and support the life sciences in the Volunteer State…John Cousins, president of Biomoda Inc., an Albuquerque, N.M.-based cancer diagnostics company, has been elected to the board of directors of the New Mexico Biotechnology and Biomedical Association (NMBio). “Biomoda has benefited from our affiliation with NMBio and I look forward to building the biotech community in New Mexico by helping other companies in the bioscience sector succeed,” he said in a prepared statement. NMBio is an affiliate of the national Biotechnology Industry Association…California’s life sciences companies attracted $2.6 billion in venture capital funding in 2009, a 25.7 percent decrease compared with the $3.5 billion they drew in 2008 but still more than any other high-tech sector in the Golden State, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree report with data provided by Thomson Reuters. Despite the slowdown in funding, California’s life sciences companies continued to expand. Another survey, meanwhile—this one conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the California Healthcare Institute—concluded that life sciences industry executives expect to navigate risks and events over the next two years that have not previously been part of the biomedical industry experience. Nearly half (48 percent) predict increased revenues, while 44 percent say revenues will hold steady; nearly 25 percent foresee an expansion in research and development investment and in access to capital; and 40 percent believe there will be an increase in biomedical IPOs over the next two years.
Secant Medical is investing in its future.
The company has added a 40,000-square-foot facility in Quakertown, Pa., to its manufacturing operations. The new facility is just six miles from the firm’s headquarters in Perkasie, Pa.
Secant executives said the new facility was added to support current and future business growth in tissue engineering and transcatheter technologies. They predict the total market for tissue engineering—including heart valve repair and replacement; musculoskeletal bone and ligament repair and replacement; and urologic bladder slings—will surpass $11.5 billion by 2016.
“We are monitoring the healthy market growth of transcatheter technology for minimally invasive surgical procedures, which is driving an increased need for biomedical textiles,” said Karen West, general manager of the company’s Advanced Technology and Materials Group. “While we see an upward trend in the market, we are well aware of the challenges that device manufacturers face from healthcare reform and other events. We must carefully balance these market dynamics in our long term planning, particularly as it pertains to our clients’ needs.”
And those needs most likely will include bone regeneration and ligament repair, as an aging world population seeks relief from such conditions as osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease. Researchers are developing ways to regenerate bone and cartilage using stem cells and a protein called NELL 1.
Bone Biologics Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., received a patent in March for a process that uses the NELL 1 protein to form cartilage. The technology is subject to review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; it has not been approved for use in humans.
Last fall, researchers at the University of Michigan announced that they had grown and repaired knee ligaments in rats from bone marrow stem cells harvested from the rats’ own bones. The researchers, according to published reports, tissue-engineered an advanced graft that includes an elastic ligament section in the center to accommodate joint motion and bone portions on the ends for more effective integration and attachment to the native bone of the injured knee.
Besides adding to the company’s manufacturing capabilities, Secant executives added to the company’s management team (see People News, page 72) and redesigned the firm’s methodology for custom-developing and making medical device products. They named the redesigned methodology the Integrated Product Development Process.
“The resulting integrated process better leverages our continuum of services at every stage of the client’s development path,” West explained. “It’s a smarter, more streamlined approach to apply the quality, collaboration, and scientific support we bring to the table.”
Steve Chadwick, Secant’s president and CEO, said the revamped product development process allows the company to remain closely aligned with clients’ development requirements, from concept to commercialization.
Secant Medical provides design, development and custom manufacturing services for biomedical textiles.
Work Progresses on New SSF Manufacturing Plant
When executives at Specialty Silicone Fabricators Inc. announced the construction of a manufacturing facility in the fall of 2008, they estimated the new building would take about two years to complete. As long as Mother Nature cooperated, that is.
Naturally, she didn’t.
“The rains did a nice job on us in January,” Kevin Meyer, Specialty Silicone’s president, recently told The Tribune of San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Those rains (as well as some other unforeseen obstacles) have pushed back moving day for the new building. Though the old structure has been demolished and the new building’s foundation has been laid, executives do not expect the facility to be ready until the first quarter of 2011.
Located on the company’s existing campus in Paso Robles, Calif., the new building will include clean rooms with special walls and flooring to reduce dust and keep products contaminant-free. “The clean rooms cost more than the construction,” Meyer noted in the Tribune article. He declined to provide figures, however.
The new two-story building will house administrative offices on the second floor and manufacturing operations on the first floor. It is designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) standards, incorporating such “green initiatives” as energy savings, water efficiency, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. While the new building will enable the company to meet a growing demand for silicone medical device components, it also will help the firm expand its manufacturing capabilities to include thermoplastics and combination products, executives said. “In the last few years we’d been thinking ‘where would we expand?’ ” Meyer explained. “We had several existing customers ask us, because they’re having problems with their existing [thermoplastics] vendors.”
Meyer intends to hire additional workers once the new facility is up and running. The company, which makes long-term medical silicone implants such as gastric bands and pacemaker leads, employs 220 people. In addition to its Paso Robles facility, the firm has manufacturing operations in Elk Rapids, Mich., and Tustin, Calif.
New Injection Molding System Boosts Firm’s Production Victory has arrived at Juno Inc.
The Anoka, Minn.-based contract manufacturer and plastic injection molder has added an ENGEL victory combi molding machine in order to boost its multi-shot molding capability. The 200-ton injection molding machine will be used to produce more than 10 million multi-component medical parts per year for an unidentified customer, Larry Johnson, Juno’s production manager, said in published reports.
Company officials looked at molding machines from about six different manufacturers before settling on the system from ENGEL, a worldwide manufacturer of injection molding machines. Juno’s product needs, according to executives, included an intricate spin stack stool and specialty molding in a white room operation.
The victory combi molding machine from ENGEL offers tie bar-less clamping with barrier-free access to the molding area, unrestricted use of the platen service and platen parallelism for precision requirements. The system features an L-shaped configuration that positions the injection units at a 90-degree angle to each other, ENGEL officials said.
Juno executives are hoping to add another two presses this year to the company’s complement of 30.
Besides enabling the company to increase the production of molded components, the Engel victory system could open up Juno to opportunities in multi-component molding and micomolding. The firm entered the micromolding market last fall with the purchase of a machine from Sodick Plustech, a Japanese molding machine manufacturer. The machine from Sodick is specially designed to mold tiny components; it features a V-line plunger that provides outstanding shot-to-shot repeatability (according to Juno executives), small shot barrels starting at 2.0 cc max, and injection speeds with 343 MPa (or 50,000 psi) injection pressure.
Though it serves the defense, aerospace, industrial and consumer industries, Juno specializes in the manufacture of multi-component parts and micromolded products for the medical sector.
N.C. Firm Expands Medical Molding Offerings
Core Technology Molding Group LLC is eyeing up more medical molding customers.
The Greensboro, N.C.-based plastic products manufacturer has invested more than $1 million in material handling equipment, injection molding presses and its clean room. The firm added two new e-max injection molding presses from ENGEL—a worldwide manufacturer of injection molding machines—to its Class 100,000 clean room in March. The presses are 110 tons and 200 tons.
ENGEL’s e-max molding presses are fully electric, high performance injection units with peak pressures of up to 2,800 bar and up to 450 millimeters per second, according to data from the Austrian firm. The presses join a 60-ton ENGEL e-motion press that Core Technology officials had installed previously in the 1,500 square-foot clean room. ENGEL’s e-motion presses offer shorter dry-cycle times and shorter cycle times compared with hydraulic machines. The presses are available in the clamp force range from 550 kN to 2.800 kN. In the lower clamp range (up to 1500 kN), the machines are tie-barless; in the higher range they have tie-bars.
Core Technology’s investment in its molding equipment and clean room will enable the firm to produce parts for two new programs at Bausch & Lomb Inc. as well as parts for other medical products, Geoff Foster, Core’s president and CEO, said in published reports. Bausch & Lomb is Core’s largest customer; it supplies the eye care giant with parts for cataract and vitreoretinal surgery products.
Core Technology operates 25 molding presses and employs 85 people. The firm serves the medical device, automotive, electronics, industrial and transportation industries, among others. The company does not release earnings reports, though executives have said they expect sales to be 40 percent higher this year compared with 2009.
Biotech in Brief
United BioSource Corporation, a Bethesda, Md.-based firm that partners with medical device and biopharmaceutical manufacturers to market their products, has opened an office in Tokyo, Japan. The new office is being led by Kumpei Kobayashi, a pharmaceutical industry veteran with more than 20 years of product development experience, and David Miller, M.D., a member of United BioSource’s management team who has served as a scientific leader on several Pan-Asian clinical studies. Company executives said they opened the new office to better serve the Asia-Pacific region… The U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration has awarded a $5 million grant to BioOhio and its partners to implement the Ohio Bioscience Industry Workforce Preparedness project. The three-year project will provide training to help 660 displaced or underemployed workers in declining industries become better equipped for careers in the Buckeye State’s bioscience industry. Forty incumbent workers will receive more advanced training that will enable them to assume higher-level jobs, creating new entry-level opportunities for the state’s unemployed residents…Biomedical research funding in Florida is in jeopardy due to the state’s $3 billion budget deficit. The state Senate’s proposed budget includes $52.2 million for two research grant organizations: The James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program and the Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program. The House fiscal plan, however, earmarks just $2.2 million for the King Biomedical Research Program. Proponents of the funding say the cut could delay important new discoveries and endangers Florida’s competitive edge in biomedical research…Joseph C. Cook Jr., founder and board chairman of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc. (in Cambridge, Mass.), has been elected to the Tennessee Biotech Association’s board of directors. Robert V. Acuff, Ph.D., association chairman, said Cook will be a “strong voice on the board” and play a vital role in helping to foster, develop and support the life sciences in the Volunteer State…John Cousins, president of Biomoda Inc., an Albuquerque, N.M.-based cancer diagnostics company, has been elected to the board of directors of the New Mexico Biotechnology and Biomedical Association (NMBio). “Biomoda has benefited from our affiliation with NMBio and I look forward to building the biotech community in New Mexico by helping other companies in the bioscience sector succeed,” he said in a prepared statement. NMBio is an affiliate of the national Biotechnology Industry Association…California’s life sciences companies attracted $2.6 billion in venture capital funding in 2009, a 25.7 percent decrease compared with the $3.5 billion they drew in 2008 but still more than any other high-tech sector in the Golden State, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree report with data provided by Thomson Reuters. Despite the slowdown in funding, California’s life sciences companies continued to expand. Another survey, meanwhile—this one conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the California Healthcare Institute—concluded that life sciences industry executives expect to navigate risks and events over the next two years that have not previously been part of the biomedical industry experience. Nearly half (48 percent) predict increased revenues, while 44 percent say revenues will hold steady; nearly 25 percent foresee an expansion in research and development investment and in access to capital; and 40 percent believe there will be an increase in biomedical IPOs over the next two years.