TYRX has a novel device - an antibiotic-impregnated envelope designed to prevent infections in CRM implants - that could create signifcant opportunities, not just for itself, but also for large CRM companies looking to differentiate their devices in a flat, crowded market. Convergence has fallen on hard times recently, but TYRX hopes to succeed where others have failed by stripping risk out of drug/device convergence.

MedEView Inc.'s web-based technology marries radiological images and reports to other patient-specific information-medical literature, treatment protocols, payer formularies, ads for drugs relevant to the patient's condition-and pushes it to the desktops of referring physicians at the time of diagnosis.

[Solgene Therapeutics LLC] has developed a method of encapsulating living cells that secrete therapeutic compounds into porous ceramic microbeads. Solgene's approach is designed to mimic the way cells are released in nature: in consistent and low doses over a sustained period of time, without triggering an immune reaction. It believes that its technology will prove an effective means of delivering a variety of large molecule compounds.

Using a unique processing technology, Osteotech helped create a market for allograft tissue transplants by increasing availability and improving quality. Riding that technology, Osteotech has gone from providing services to developing products with a line of proprietary allograft tissue, expanding a market in which it remains the leader. While the tissue market is growing and attracting competition from large orthopedic companies, surgeons have been slow in coming around, concerned largely by safety issues similar to those facing blood products. And the specter of a biological solution hovers over the tissue transplant field. Yet, Osteotech remains confident it can continue to grow and fend off major competitors, while expanding internationally and adding spinal implants to the company's tissue products.