SurModics suspended the trial with their SurVeil drug-coated balloon in March after the US FDA sent a letter to physicians alerting them to possible safety problem with paclitaxel-coated devices. The company has updated the patient consent form and established a new patient follow-up program for the trial.

Abbott will pay SurModics $25m upfront and up to $67m in milestones for the exclusive right to commercialization SurVeil worldwide.

Nestle Health signed a $1.9 billion microbiome deal with Seres; Thermo Fisher paid $1.3 billion for fellow life sciences company Affymetrix. Biopharma and device financing totaled $2.9 billion and $254 million, respectively.

Drug-coated balloon (DCBs) catheters have become the latest weapon in the fight against peripheral artery disease in the US, although they have been in use in Europe for some time. While the number of procedures employing DCBs is still dwarfed by conventional angioplasty procedures, they are expected to grow at a much faster rate, fueling a market projected to reach $1 billion by 2020; meanwhile other procedures such as mechanical atherectomy are also expected to show significant growth.