Pathway Medical Technologies has successfully completed it’s submission to FDA based on excellent results in a clinical trial of 172 patients (with a 6 month follow-up). The company expects to receive the FDA clearance in early 2008.

Pathway Medical designs, develops and manufactures products for treating arterial vascular disease (atherosclerosis) addressing a very significant clinical need of 12M people in the USA (~25M globally) who suffer from Peripheral Artery Diseases.

The company’s first product, the Pathway PV™ System, is a unique interventional catheter which has been designed to remove plaque and thrombus from the major arteries of the legs. The Pathway PV ™ System is designed to scrape away the plaque from the artery wall and then evacuate it from the artery with a sophisticated aspiration system.

The Pathway catheter has a proprietary means to expand within the artery, allowing larger vessels to be treated with a smaller catheter. The broad flexibility of the Pathway intellectual property will allow for adaptation of the design to treat all other occluded arteries and significant body lumens ensuring a robust product pipeline for the future.

CellGuide, a pioneer in highly integrated host-based GPS/GNSS solutions for mass-market mobile devices, announced the ACLYS solution, the newest member of its line of high performance GPS products. The ACLYS chip, together with its associated host- based software, leads the market evolution from existing stand-alone GPS products to more highly integrated solutions.

ACLYS replaces dedicated GPS silicon by leveraging mobile processors or other wireless components inside the mobile device, to provide GPS functionality. CellGuide's proven GPS technology has been integrated by several leading Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile IC vendors to date. Implementation of the ACLYS solution enables mass-market device manufacturers to implement GPS at break-through cost, while providing superior, best-of-breed GPS performance.

Horizon Semiconductors, a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enables secure video and audio compression & transmission for the consumer electronics and home entertainment markets, announced the availability of the industry's first single chip multi-standard dual-channel HD Decoder with integrated Encoder/Transcoder for the Cable and Satellite Set-Top Box, Digital Video Recorder and Home Media Center markets.

The Hz4120 and Hz3120 integrate real time dual HD AVC, VC-1, DV/HDV or MPEG2/4 decoder & AVC, VC1, MPEG2/4 encoder/transcoder, along with an advanced audio processor, embedded application CPU, 2D/3D graphics accelerator and multi-plane display processor into a single chip, thus enabling end-users to substantially benefit from the lower cost, smaller size and improved features of next-generation STBs and media players. Furthermore, the Hz4120 and Hz3120 embed a variety of advanced interfaces and security features targeted to meet the specific design characteristics of the Cable and Satellite markets respectively. STBs with Horizon's integrated SoC solutions will allow operators to provide current and future subscribers with advanced services including more hours of stored programs, transfer of video and audio content to portable media players, cell phones & game consoles, and location-free (place-shifting) TV at home and over the network.

CircuLite has successful completed the implantation of the first patient in a European feasibility trial. The patient continues to feel very well completing now eleven weeks of follow-up.

CircuLite is developing a miniature blood pump, designed to be placed superficially like a pacemaker, for the long-term treatment of chronic heart failure. The Synergy™ Pocket Circulatory Assist device is designed to rest a failing heart by supplementing its natural function. By providing long-term circulatory assist on a minimally invasive platform, CircuLite’s Synergy™ has the potential to transform the management of chronic heart failure and improve the quality of life for millions of patients and their families.

Synergy is a miniature implantable blood pump, the size of a AA battery, that can be implanted superficially in a pocket, like a pacemaker. The device is designed to provide long-term, partial circulatory support in patients with chronic heart failure. The primary objective of the first-in-man trial is to assess the safety of the device in patients with chronic heart failure who are waiting to receive heart transplants.

The company’s goal is to transform the treatment model for chronic heart failure with a device that saves lives and allows patients to improve their life quality and remain outside of the hospital setting.

FIS announced that Celent, a leading research and advisory company in the insurance sector has ranked FIS-ALIS highly for its functional breadth and technology in a new report titled “European Policy Administration 2007: Life Vendors”. This report is one of the most comprehensive assessments available of European life insurance policy administration systems.

The report includes profiles of more than 20 systems, (full and limited profiles), and comparative charts and tables. Celent conducted extensive research on the policy administration providers and packages in the field and has produced an insightful profile of the main contenders in the field that highlights their relative merits. Celent interviewed vendors, reviewed RFIs for all systems, conducted follow up calls, interviewed two client references and received a demonstration from each of the vendors.

Celent has developed a framework for evaluating vendors called Celent ABCD Vendor View and it shows the relative position of each one of the vendors in four categories: Advanced Technology, Breadth of functionality, Customer base, Depth of client services. The vendor position on the map represents its ranking in functionality and technology, while its size and color represent its market penetration and organizational depth. Sixteen vendors were positioned on the ABCD Vendor View and FIS is rated at the top based on high relative ranking in functionality and technology.

“This report indicates that FIS’ commitment to providing superior business function supported by technological excellence is a winning one” said Graham Newman, Global Marketing Director of FIS. “FIS continues to strive to have ALIS recognised as the most fit-for-purpose policy administration system on the market. This important report from Celent supports our view that ALIS has the best combination of technological platform and business function, the best combination of mature, proven, comprehensive and complete function coupled with modern, innovative processing capability and usability.

BioLineRx Ltd. (TASE: BLRX), Israel’s leading drug development company, announced that it has signed a worldwide exclusive license agreement with Gene Vector Technologies Ltd. for the development and commercialization of BL-4040, a novel drug for the treatment of acute kidney injury (AKI).

BL-4040 is a genetically-engineered version of the major capsid protein VP1, derived from the outer protein shell of the virus SV40, therefore it does not contain any viral material. By boosting the natural stress response and survival pathways of kidney cells, BL-4040 may prevent apoptosis (cell death) of kidney cells following AKI. In pre-clinical trials, BL-4040 has been shown to protect cultured cells from apoptosis in vitro and to dramatically increase survival when AKI was induced in mice. The compound was shown to be effective for the treatment of AKI over a wide dose range and was well-tolerated even at a 1,000 fold excess dose. BL-4040 was invented by Professor Ariella Oppenheim of the Department of Hematology and Dr. Yosef Haviv of the Department of Nephrology, Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem.

“BL-4040 is a promising addition to our rich and dynamic pipeline of exciting and innovative drug candidates. Acute kidney injury is a form of acute renal failure that often complicates hospitalizations and severely compromises patient prognosis and survival rates. BL-4040 is extremely effective in mice, relatively simple to produce and non-toxic, even at very high doses.,” stated Morris C. Laster, M.D., CEO of BioLineRx. “We believe that BL-4040 offers the potential for a highly effective and safe therapy that taps into the natural defense systems of the body.”

“BL-4040 holds the promise of dramatically improving patient survival in hospitals in general and in the ICU in particular,” said Professor Ariella Oppenheim, "We are confident that BioLineRx, with its drug development expertise and resources, is the best group to swiftly advance our invention towards the clinic and beyond."

SURF Communication Solutions announced the general availability of version 5.0 of SurfWare-Media™, its multimedia processing solution that combines a wide range of audio, video, fax, and modem conversion engines.

SurfWare-Media is supplied with Surf’s AMC and PCI Express resource boards, PTMC DSP farm board, PCI card, and DSP chip-level solutions. It defines a new generation of Surf’s field-proven convergence technologies, featuring support for H.264, iLBC, and WMV9/WMA (decoders only) in addition to the wide range of codecs and processing capabilities supported previously by SurfUP™.

Enhancements, such as a TrueType font text overlay, speech time scaling, and network smoothing, provide optimized video functionality and performance. The new version specifically addresses the advanced requirements of a wide range of IMS-ready carrier-grade and enterprise telecom infrastructure equipment, such as MRF, media servers, media gateways, session border controllers, as well as iPBX, CTI and other messaging, streaming, recording and conferencing applications.

SurfWare-Media provides the industry’s first completely integrated media processing solution, which runs audio/voice, video, fax and modem media as well as the 3G-324M protocol simultaneously on a single DSP, Texas Instruments’ TMS320C64x™ DSP generation. In addition, Surf provides an open DSP framework that allows telecom infrastructure manufacturers to integrate their own user-defined channel and incorporate ANSI-C algorithms in the DSP.

Leonardo Media an international leader in managing and distributing rich media content for the travel industry, announced an agreement with TRUST International, a Travelport brand and a global provider of reservation and distribution solutions for the hospitality industry, for the development and implementation of an interface between TRUST’s Voyager Central Reservation System (CRS) and Leonardo’s Digital Asset Management Platform.

The interface between TRUST and Leonardo allows images to be seamlessly transferred from the Leonardo database to TRUST Content, a content management tool, allowing the most accurate and up-to-date images to be shown in TRUST´s call centers and reservation centers, TRUST Booker 2.0 internet booking application, and other distribution partners.

All Leonardo Hotel customers using the digital platform will now be able to upload images for a specific channel directly to the Voyager CRS. The images will then be made available on the CRS, as well as being forwarded for immediate availability in partner distribution systems and channels – be it the call center or an online channels.

T-Mobile announced the first winner to collect £25,000 on the mobile Video Poker application facilitated by UK mobile gaming provider Cellectivity. The big win comes straight off the back of another lucky winner netting £20,000 on mobile roulette also facilitated by Cellectivity. The flurry of big wins confirms mobile arrival on the gambling scene alongside more established internet devices.

Video Poker and Roulette are both featured on “Cash Casino” T-Mobile’s highly successful gambling portal. The service which has now totaled more than 60,000 visits since its launch less than a year ago is developed and operated by Cellectivity, the UK’s leading mobile betting and gambling provider. Cash Casino is unique in allowing users to download a wide range of exciting gaming applications developed exclusively for mobiles direct to their handset.