Home » Agreements/contracts: MedPro receives $2.7M payment from Greiner for production line
Agreements/contracts: MedPro receives $2.7M payment from Greiner for production line
A Medical Device Daily
MedPro Safety Products (Lexington, Kentucky) which develops and markets medical safety devices incorporating proprietary needlestick prevention technology, has received initial payments totaling $2.7 million from Greiner Bio-One International following Greiner's approval of production line designs for MedPro's phlebotomy products.
In July, MedPro extended its original agreement with Greiner to incorporate all MedPro products in the phlebotomy market segment (Medical Device Daily, July 24, 2008).
As part of this expanded relationship, Greiner is making a significant commitment to expand its manufacturing capacity by constructing a new facility to open in the first half of 2009. Greiner has extended the original contract by taking over both models of MedPro's safety blood collection holder, signed a worldwide contract to distribute MedPro's safety winged collection set, and acquired the rights to assemble and manufacture these products in Greiner's new facility.
The parties' prior agreements had given Greiner exclusive worldwide rights to market and distribute MedPro's tube-touch blood collection system. The new agreement extends the term for the tube-touch system to six-years from the commencement of initial commercial manufacturing. Additionally, the new agreement expands Greiner's product access to include both MedPro's tube-touch and skin-touch blood collection system. Finally, Greiner also executed a separate and additional agreement that provides exclusive worldwide rights to MedPro's winged safety blood collection set. Both agreements give Greiner the right to manufacture, assemble, and distribute the covered products.
MedPro's President/CEO, Walter Weller, said: "These agreements extend our relationship with Greiner and will bring our unique and proprietary passive needlestick safety technology to the market. We are very excited that Greiner has made a commitment to our blood collection safety devices to facilitate and complement its sale of blood collection tubes, equipment, and analytical services. We look forward to accelerating the global market exposure for our products and for our company."
In other agreements/contracts:
• The V Foundation for Cancer Research (Cary, North Carolina) reported a partnership with The Garry Betty Foundation (Atlanta). The organizations are joining forces to raise funds throughout the U.S. to benefit cutting-edge cancer research opportunities.
"In the last few years, The V Foundation has placed an increased emphasis on identifying organizations with which we can collaborate in funding research projects," says Nick Valvano, CEO of The V Foundation. "By combining the efforts of two organizations who share the same mission, such as The V Foundation and The Garry Betty Foundation, we have developed a powerful synergy in achieving our common goal."
The Garry Betty Foundation was founded by Garry Betty, who served as president/CEO of EarthLink from 1996 to 2007 and transformed if from a small regional internet service provider (ISP) with fewer than 100,000 customers to a national brand with more than five million subscribers.
The first initiative of this collaboration is working with the Georgia Cancer Coalition to fund The Gary Betty/V Foundation Chair of Cancer Nanotechnology position at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta).
All research grants funded by this effort will be named the Gary Betty/V Foundation Research Grant.
The V Foundation will provide marketing, administrative, and scientific support for The Garry Betty Foundation. The two organizations will collaborate to raise money for cancer research focused on finding meaningful cures and supporting individuals and families who are stricken with the disease.
• Caprion Proteomics (Montreal) reported that it has been awarded a $12.9 million contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the US National Institutes of Health, to carry out Biodefense research in the area of infectious disease biomarkers.
Under the contract to be performed over a five-year period, Caprion will act as one of two NIAID Clinical Proteomics Centers for Infectious Disease & Biodefense, and will employ its CellCarta quantitative protein profiling technologies to perform several large scale applied proteomics projects using human clinical samples from patients with infectious diseases. The projects will be aimed at the discovery, qualification, and verification of candidate biomarkers with potential for clinical use to improve detection and diagnosis and to monitor therapeutic and vaccine responses and susceptibility to infection for diseases caused by various pathogens. This second major Biodefense research contract awarded to Caprion by NIAID builds on the expertise and results demonstrated by Caprion as part of an initial contract awarded in 2004 and still in progress.
Caprion will retain rights to commercialize candidate biomarkers and diagnostic products discovered in this project.
Caprion Proteomics is a provider of proteomics-based services to the pharmaceutical industry.