A roundup of recent medtech strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions and financings.

Over the past five years, big cap device companies have been some of the strongest performers among all life science stocks, and this year's conference represented something of a renaissance of device companies. However, most interesting wasn't so much the revival of interest in device stocks itself, but the message that device companies sent and that investors are embracing: "Forget about the hype; slow and steady wins the race."

The market is promising for using catheters, instead of surgery, to open vascular blockages. But the right technology remains elusive.

The company that did the largest private financing last years was, surprisingly, Wilmington, MA-based OmniSonics Medical Technologies. The company is developing an innovative technology that uses acoustical energy to break up clots, plaques, and other occlusions wherever they occur in the human vasculature. OmniSonics' Series C financing will ultimately wind up raising a total of $44 million. The company's first approval, expected later this year, will come in treating peripheral disease, but the golden ring is clearly coronary arteries and that includes chronic total occlusions, a challenge that has been particularly vexing for both interventional cardiologists and medical device developers. Indeed, the recent news that CTO start-up Lumend Inc. is significantly scaling back its operations is a case in point.