AstraZeneca is considering spinning off a Swedish business that makes dental implants and medical devices for $2bn (£1.25bn). The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker said today that it had hired JP Morgan Chase to help with a strategic review of the firm. In 2009 the industry suffered its weakest year, with sales falling by 3% to 5%. This year the market has been flat but it is slowly recovering. Potential suitors for Astra Tech include US rivals such as privately held Biomet, along
Swedish Oral Hygiene manufacturer, Tepe, has released their new implant toothbrush design specifically shaped to allow dental implant recipients to maintain excellent oral hygiene. The Tepe Implant Care brush has angled neck and slim brush head for easy access to the lingual and palatal surfaces of implants.
Researchers at the Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine, part of the University of Tampere, Finland have successfully replaced a 65-year-old patient`s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Stem cells were isolated from the patient`s fat and grew for two weeks in a specially formulated nutritious soup that included the patient`s own blood serum. When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to
Three years after patients were given Nobel Direct dental implants, the risk of the implant loosening has increased even more. A follow-up by researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy shows that eight per cent of the implants are lost. “We have followed up 48 patients who were among the first to get the implant. For each passing year, we have been able to see how the problems related to these implants have grown more and more,” observes Pär-Olov Östman, a dentist
The Swedish medical technology company Astra Tech AB is purchasing the US dental company Atlantis Components Inc. for USD 71 million in cash. This business deal is part of Astra Tech’s growth strategy. “The purchase of Atlantis gives us an even stronger product portfolio in the field of dental implants. We strengthen our position in the North American market and can introduce the latest digital CAD/CAM technology in Europe. This also gives us a leading position in the fastest growing
This Swedish company has designed an implant system based on generic implant concepts, but incorporates an efficient packaging system and a web-based reorder/inventory system. Their `White Book` makes for interesting reading.
The Swedish Medical Products Agency(SMPA) released a demand for Nobel Biocare to improve the instructions for both its NobelDirect and NobelPerfect implants. Previously Nobel Biocare had released a response to the recent marketing ban on their NobelDirect implant following reports that it lost an excessive amount of bone following placement. The SMPA stood by its decision that the firm not be allowed to market the implants until it had carried out the improvement of the instructions. The SMPA stated that
Nobel Biocare has released a response to the recent marketing ban in their NobelDirect implant following reports that it lost an excessive amount of bone following placement. The response called the initial report to the Swedish Medical Products Agency (SMPA) on NobelDirect by Dr Albrektsson as `… incomplete and reported in an unscientific way. The analysis of the present manuscript shows that the material still suffers from intransparency and lack of scientific stringency. The process for peer-review may even be
Astratech has released a customized version of Simplant for use with their implant system. The software program also contains 3D images of implants, abutments and teeth. This ensures efficient, accurate and reliable planning of implant positions, sizes and number of implants, and abutments to be used. In addition it provides better control over the esthetic outcome. When the case is planned, a surgical guide is ordered to make sure that the planning result will be replicated in the real surgical
Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki and their collaborators from Berlin and Kyoto have now shown that continuous tooth generation can be induced in mammals. The research results were published in `Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,` (PNAS). The researchers activated the Wnt signaling pathway in mouse tissue; this signaling pathway is one of those used for cell communication and plays an important role in embryonic development. As a result of stimulating this particular
