Spine Wave Announces Partnership With MB Innovations

Spine Wave Inc. officials announce that the company has entered into an agreement with MB Innovations, a newly formed product development company based in Memphis, TN. MBI will initially develop products exclusively for Spine Wave while they expand their infrastructure in anticipation of taking on additional medical device clients. This partnership was conceived in collaborative discussions between Spine Wave and MB Venture Partners over the last year. In order to solidify the partnership and closely align interests, MB Venture Partners will be investing in Spine Wave.

MBI will assemble an accomplished team of engineers and advisors who have experience in developing commercially successful medical devices. The team will be led by Troy Drewry, president of MBI. Troy began his career in product development at Medtronic Sofamor Danek and most recently held the position as V.P. of US Operations for Paradigm Spine. Mike Sherman, a partner at MB Venture Partners, will serve as Executive Chairman of MBI. Mike's product development career spans more than 20 years at Synthes, Smith + Nephew and Medtronic Sofamor Danek where he generated more than 90 issued US patents.

"We are excited to connect Spine Wave's engineering team with the team at MBI," says John Pafford, Spine Wave's CTO. "Mike, Troy and I worked together for several years while at Sofamor Danek and I have the utmost respect for their capabilities. We have already identified the initial product opportunities which will leverage Spine Wave's intellectual property portfolio. I am confident that MBI will accelerate the pace at which we execute on our mission of delivering important and highly differentiated technologies to the spine surgeon community."

Spine Wave recently announced the continued development of its family of PEEK spacers utilizing  Spine Wave's proprietary expandable technology with the introduction of the StaXx(R) XDL Expandable Device which is the company's first device intended to be implanted using a lateral surgical approach. As the Company looks forward, 2012 will mark the launch of a cervical product family and further offerings within the percutaneous fixation systems. With a rapidly increasing product offering, Spine Wave intends to aggressively expand its US distribution presence and is actively recruiting sales managers and distributors.

"We are very excited to enter into this unique and highly collaborative arrangement," comments Mike Sherman. He continued, "MBI's goal is to rapidly develop the next generation of novel spine products for Spine Wave as we build MBI into a significant entity capable of supporting multiple clients. The abundance of engineering talent in this area makes Memphis the ideal location for this type of company.  Spine Wave is the ideal partner because they are committed to innovation and they are rapidly assembling the distribution network necessary to achieve commercial success."