By CHARLES FORELLE
May 21, 2007 - Hologic Inc. has agreed to buy Cytyc Corp. for $6.2 billion in cash and stock, in a deal that combines two major players in women's health care.

Executives of both companies say the tie-up will increase the opportunity for sales representatives to win over obstetricians and gynecologists, who are critical to recommending that patients use the companies' products.

May 21, 2007 – SourceMedical recently announced new contract signings for the company's SourceRad solution with Nueterra Healthcare LLC, a provider of development and management services to surgical facilities and Regent Surgical Health, a developer and manager of surgery centers and physician-owned hospitals around the country.

May 18, 2007 — Acambis plc (Acambis), a biotechnology company targeting infectious diseases with novel vaccines, announces that the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the FDA voted unanimously that Acambis' smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, is both safe and efficacious.

May 18, 2007 — ZOLL Medical Corp., a manufacturer of resuscitation devices and related software solutions, today announced that it will display its range of resuscitation products — including the new ZOLL R Series defibrillator — in its booth (#1227) at the 2007 National Teaching Institute and Critical Care Exposition May 22-24 in Atlanta. More than 6,500 critical care nurses are expected to attend.

May 18, 2007 — Genaera Corp. announced that dosing of subjects has begun in study MSI-1436C-101, the Phase 1, first-in-man study of trodusquemine, its novel antiobesity compound. MSI-1436 works centrally and peripherally to regulate insulin and leptin receptor signaling through inhibition of its novel target enzyme PTP-1B.

May 18, 2007 - The "small but significant decline" in mammogram rates reported among women ages 40 and older from 2000 to 2005 is "disturbing" because it means that an increasing number of women will "fail" to receive the early detection that raises their chances of breast cancer survival, a New York Times editorial says (New York Times, 5/15).

May 18, 2007 - HealthTronics, Inc., a provider of urology services and products, today introduced its newest growth initiative, TotalRad Radiation Therapy Solutions, which provides Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) technology within a turn-key exclusive partnership offering.

May 17, 2007 - Given Imaging Ltd. today announced that it has received marketing clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its PillCam SB 2 video capsule and RAPID 5 software, which can be viewed at the Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2007 in Washington, D.C. from May 19-24.

May 17, 2007 - According to a study recently today in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, elderly women who receive radiation therapy for early-stage breast cancer appear to have no increased risk of a heart attack after taking pre-existing cardiac risk factors into account. Pre-existing cardiac risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia do not potentiate the effects of radiation on the heart.

May 17, 2007 — The U.S. health care system is "a dysfunctional mess," and politicians who insist otherwise look ignorant, according to a medical journal essay by a prominent ethicist at the National Institutes of Health.

"If a politician declares that the United States has the best health care system in the world today, he or she looks clueless rather than patriotic or authoritative," Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

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