That Was The Week That Was

Good Morning Fellow Bloggers:

TSB took a little time off from the spine world to help a friend with his addiction to a certain drug and young women.  You know what Dirty Harry once said, "a man's got to know his limitations."   So, we're glad to be back on the beat, nothing is more refreshing than the exciting world of market makers, consulting agreements, physician owned distributorships and crazy people.  Sherman Oaks is a nice town, but it was time to get out of Dodge.

Last week was an interesting week in spine.  It started off with The Stem Cell Summit in the Big Apple.  The meeting was a Stem Cell extravaganza, led by no other than self-proclaimed stem cell guru and investor Robin Young. What we learned from this meeting is that there has been tremendous advancement in the field of stem cells, especially in aiding in bone growth and fusion.  As a sidebar to our readers, is there anything that a spine surgeon wouldn't try, to achieve fusion?  Despite these advancements, there is still much work to be done in understand the efficacy of stem cells.  But if you attended the meeting, well,  it was another meeting, and at those prices it made NYC look affordable.  Robin continues his quest to be acknowledged as a pioneer in stem cells, all that was missing was the covered wagons.  But let's get serious, stem cells buzz like neon, but will they ever burn away?   There were about twenty companies.  Considering that stem cells are cheaper than BMP, yet more expensive than DBM, they must be a bargin? At least BMP's have some retrospective papers on its efficacy in spine.   So where's the beef?  Special kudos must go out to the Mod Squad, those are Robin's minions whom without their hard work, these meeting would never take place,  hopefully y'all will get a raise this year.

Other news last week: we received multiple e-mails from the Street with word that Amedica might have raised some capital, if so, TSB would like to know who was crazy enough to invest into another company that is riding the future on silicon nitride?  $30 million?  That 's crazy money.  If so, could hookers, limos and Grey Goose be in the picture?  If there is truth to the rumor, it would behoove investors to keep a tight reign on their money. Considering the sales management team was given unrealistic revenue objectives for fiscal 2011, something could be brewing.  But then again, what do the people running this operation know about selling spine products?  If Globus has had trouble going public, does anyone really believe that Amedica has the legs to do it?  Everyone in the investment community knows that Shappley's goal is to take the company public.

It was also announced that as of March 7th, hmmmmm that must be today, Bacterin will begin trading shares of common stock under the symbol "BONE," very original,  on the NYSE Amex.  For those of you not familiar with Bacterin, they are "the creators and developers of revolutionary bone grafting material," taking the market by storm.  It will be interesting in continuing our watch of this revolutionary company, let's see what the investors believe, will they be desperate or will they exhibit prudence in their choices?

In other news, the state of Ohio provided AxioMed with a $500,000 loan to help the company in its quest to bring a cervical disc to the marketplace vis-a-vis the Ohio Third Frontier, a government sponsored organization (I thought the government was bad) that seeks new technologies through innovation that could result in creating new jobs for the state.  TSB thought that Ohio was having budgetary problems? So the pressure is on AxioMed to give back something of substance in the near future to the hard working people of the  Buckeye State.  Jobs are where its at, so let's give a hand to at least one spine company that's not looking to send development and manufacturing overseas.

So remember fellow readers keep those post cards and memo's coming.  Have a great week!