Biogen/Eisai’s aducanumab, as the first disease-modifying therapy and setting a precedent for accelerated approval, lifted the entire Alzheimer’s field.

Noteworthy news from medtech start-ups. This month we profile Ibris, which is developing prognostics to identify breast cancer patients in need of chemotherapy, and Delphinus Medical Technologies, whose platform enables 3-D full breast ultrasound.

Delphinus Medical Technologies Inc. is applying underwater sound wave technology to more accurately and safely detect breast cancer. The Michigan-based company, a spin-out of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, has developed a full-breast ultrasound tomography system that quickly and effectively differentiates benign from malignant breast masses without compression or radiation exposure.

Battelle believes its electrohydrodynamic (EHD) technology can deliver drugs to the lung to treat asthma, emphysema, cancers of the lung, and other conditions more effectively than existing commercial inhalation systems. Drug companies are interested, as evidenced by the company's deals with Pfizer, the Ross Products division of Abbott, and others. Battelle is partnering EHD and also developing an internally developed inhaled chemotherapy system on its own.