Nearly a year after one of its teams of MBA students swept one of the most prestigious pharmaceutical case competitions in the country, Rutgers Business School is turning host.

Teams from 11 business schools, including Georgetown and Columbia, have signed up to compete in the school's first biopharmaceutical case competition.

The day-long competition will be held Nov. 10 at Rutgers Business School's $83 million facility in Newark, NJ.

The teams will be competing for cash prizes as well as the recognition of some of the industry's leading companies.

"It brings another layer of national exposure to the school,'' says Chris Parker, a Rutgers MBA student who competed at Kellogg School of Management earlier this year.  As co-president of the pharmaceutical club, Parker helped to organize the competition being hosted by Rutgers.

Parker says Rutgers will follow what has become "the gold standard'' for pharmaceutical case competitions: Each team will have a week to prepare after receiving a case study that reflects a current, real-life marketing or operational issue faced by the industry.

The teams will be judged on their presentations by a panel made up of representatives from each of the seven companies that have agreed to sponsor the competition.

"It's very intense. There's a lot of ground to cover in a short time,'' Parker says. "But it's a chance to bring your expertise to life in a way the interview process does not bring to light."

Rutgers won last year at Kellogg School of Management, one of the premiere case competitions in the country. And Parker helped a team from Rutgers Business School win honorable mention at Kellogg's competition earlier this year.

The case competitions provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to prospective employers and to network among both students and industry professionals. Leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, which often sponsor the events, use the events to identify new talent. 

Julie Oka, a Rutgers MBA student who serves with Parker as co-president of the school's pharmaceutical club, says the corporate sponsors backing the event at Rutgers helped to attract teams from some of the country's leading business schools. "These competitions are recruiting tools for the companies. People get jobs out of these competitions,'' she says.

Mahmud Hassan, a professor in the pharmaceutical management program, says the competitions serve multiple purposes, including marketing Rutgers to prospective students who want to concentrate their MBA studies in pharmaceutical management.

"It's a good thing for the companies to see talent in one place,'' Hassan says, "but for us, it's also a way of letting the top-ranked business schools know we're a player in this industry, that our students are also top-ranked.''

Teams from the following schools will participate: Boston University, School of Management, Columbia Business School, Duke University's Fuqua School of Management, George Washington University's School of Business, and Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

There will also be teams from New York University's Stern School of Business, Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business, University of Connecticut's School of Business, University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business, and Wake Forest University's School of Business. 

The event is being sponsored by some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies: Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eisai, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, and Campbell-Alliance, a leading consultant to the biopharmaceutical and medical technology industries.

Parker says getting seven companies to sign on as sponsors was a huge factor in attracting so many teams and teams from some of the country's top-ranked business schools.

"We have seven leading companies sponsoring the competition,'' Parker says, "that gives a prominence to what we're doing.''

For more information, call Daniel Stoll, at 973-353-5879, or email him.

STD Med Inc. receives a Certificate of Good Practices for Manufacturing of Class III Medical Devices from ANVISA, the Brazilian National Surveillance Agency (Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria –ANVISA). All medical devices must be registered with ANVISA before being sold in Brazil. The Certificate of Good Practices was granted after an intensive audit by the Brazilian agency of STD Med's manufacturing facilities. Currently this audit has a 2 to 3 year wait list and is one of the primary hurdles for new medical device product registration in Brazil.

Steven Tallarida, president of STD Med Inc. says in a statement, "We look forward to bringing U.S. quality medical products into the South American healthcare system." 

Rafael Martinelli de Oliveira, President of BMR Medical, a Brazilian medical device commercialization and distribution company also adds, "STD Med has been a manufacturing partner since 2006 and has always provided us with outstanding service and high quality products. They understand the Brazilian market and their willingness and ability to meet local requirements has always been a top priority. A result of this commitment to the Brazilian market is ANVISA GMP certification, which will allow us to launch new products faster and more efficiently."

SyncMedical LLC, a subsidiary of STD Med Inc., is uniquely positioned to further assist in establishing emerging new technologies in Brazil. With a distribution network of 13 offices in Brazil, SyncMedical has the ability to establish sales and marketing support in the Brazilian medical device market for any U.S. based company looking to launch their products into Brazil and Latin America.

As an approved manufacturer, STD Med can now provide their clients with the needed documentation to significantly shorten the regulatory approval process in Brazil. With a population of over 250 million people, Brazil's medical device market is in the top ten globally and with ANVISA certification, STD Med is poised to become a major producer of quality medical device products for the Brazilian marketplace. The addition of the ANVISA approval continues to identify STD Med, Inc.  as a leading medical device company serving customers throughout the world.

Officials at Stryker announce the global commercial launch of the Trevo ProVue Retriever. The Trevo ProVue Retriever is the first clot removal device fully visible during the procedure for precise positioning within the clot and optimized clot retrieval in patients experiencing acute ischemic stroke. Previous technology only provided visibility to the edges of the device.

"Trevo ProVue Retriever's full visibility provides a significant clinical benefit," says Professor Liebig, M.D., Head of Neuroradiology, University Hospital of Cologne in Cologne, Germany. "I am impressed with how full device visibility provides more information during the procedure to quickly and easily position the device and enables real-time feedback for a new level of confidence to open blood vessels."

Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) was the institution where the first patient in the United States was treated using the retriever.

"It is of great benefit to be able to see how a device interacts with the clot within the vessel, and may be able to demonstrate an underlying stenosis, as it did in the first patient we treated with the device," says Gary Nesbit, M.D., Professor of Neuroradiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, and the Dotter Interventional Institute at OHSU. "This gives me better information for clinical decisions and potentially increases the chance for better outcomes for my patients."

"Trevo ProVue represents our dedication to providing patients and physicians with the most advanced tools available to treat acute ischemic stroke," says Mark Paul, president of Stryker's neurovascular division. "Trevo ProVue sets a new standard in stent retriever technology. It's the first fully visible device allowing physicians to visualize placement, clot interaction and retrieval – that can make a big difference in patient treatment."

The Trevo ProVue Retriever is supported by robust clinical evidence from the Trevo family of Retrievers in the Trevo and Trevo 2 clinical trials, which demonstrated high revascularization and improved clinical outcomes compared to the first generation Merci Retriever.  The device has been granted 510(k) market clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is also available in international markets where it has been cleared for sale.]

Click here to watch an animation of the device.

Officials at St. Jude announce that the company's renal denervation system lowered blood pressure at six months.

Targeting nerves in the renal arteries leading to the kidneys, the EnligHTN I study helped patients reduce their blood pressure 28 mmHg points after 30 days. That rate was kept up after six months, according to studies. Seventy-six percent of patients responded to the therapy, with blood pressure dropping from an average of 176/96 mmHg to 150/86 mmHg. No serious problems with the device or therapy were reported.

The EngligHTN system disrupts a network of nerves that controls blood pressure, a process which has been found to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure, according to the Star Tribune in Minnesota.