Even Botox is getting hit by the economic slowdown in the United States, says David Pyott, chief executive of Allergan, which makes it.

Previous reports had suggested that cost-conscious consumers had backed away from plastic surgery but were continuing to get Botox injections to combat wrinkles.

In reporting its first-quarter financial results, the Irvine-based company said worldwide 12-month sales growth of Botox slowed to 18 percent, down from 24 percent in the fourth quarter. Excluding the effects of the falling dollar, that first-month increase was 13.5 percent worldwide, the company said.

“All of the slowdown in growth rate is attributable to the United States,” Pyott said in a conference call about the financial report. “It appears that the U.S. slowdown is a reflection of weak consumer spending behavior.”

The economy has had the greatest effect on sales of breast implants, Pyott said. Other products affected, he said, are “secondly, probably fillers and thirdly Botox.”

Analyst Larry Biegelsen of Wachovia Capital Markets estimated that Botox revenues in the United States grew 10 percent in the 12 months leading up to the first quarter, compared to more than 20 percent a year earlier.

These are Allergan’s figures for 12-month sales growth worldwide, excluding currency adjustments:

• Lap-Band obesity intervention, up 31.9 percent.
• Dermal fillers and other facial aesthetics, up 16.3 percent.
• Breast implants, up 8.5 percent.
• Botox, up 13.5 percent

Related news

• Allergan’s sales, earnings jump — overseas
• Economy hits plastic surgery from San Diego to Los Angeles
• Economy nips at O.C. plastic surgery

Cancer drug specialist Spectrum Pharmaceuticals of Irvine announced today that it received $20 million in cash for its share of future revenues from sales of sumatriptan injections, a treatment for migraines.

The money will help Spectrum launch its Levoleucovorin therapy for bone cancer patients, said Dr. Rajesh C. Shrotriya, the company’s chief executive.

The payment came from Par Pharmaceutical of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., a generic drug company that is Spectrum’s partner in marketing sumatriptan injections. In return for its $20 million, Par increased its share of sumatriptan profits to 95 percent from 38 percent, Par said.

Sumatriptan is a generic form of GlaxoSmithKline’s Imitrex.

Levoleucovorin, which the Food and Drug Administration approved for sale in March, eases side effects that osteosarcoma patients suffer during high-dose methotrexate therapy. Spectrum expects to begin selling it next month.

Spectrum’s main focus is on cancer and urology drugs, but it seized the opportunity for profit that sumatriptan represented and so far has been paid $27 million from that venture, Shrotriya said

“Not only does this cash infusion obviate the need to raise cash anytime soon, it enhances our ability to successfully launch Levoleucovorin and carry out our business plan without having to worry about the financial markets at this time,” he said.

Spectrum posted a loss of $34 million last year and, as of Dec. 31, had $56 million in short-term investments and cash on hand.

Related news:

• Experimental lung-cancer drug shows promise, Spectrum says
• Spectrum stock soars on FDA approval of cancer drug
• Cancer drug company Spectrum names new medical officer
• New cancer drug –- Spectrum announces test in first patient

“Not ready for prime time” was the verdict on natural-orifice surgery from Dr. Michael Marohn of Johns Hopkins at the recent 21st Century Surgery conference in Irvine.

But medical-device maker USGI of San Clemente is working hard to change that.

In recent weeks, surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center removed the appendix from two patients without major incisions into the abdomen – once through the vagina, once through the mouth using an endoscopic surgical tool from USGI. These operations are the latest examples of Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery, or NOTES, an experimental procedure aimed at reducing pain and decreasing patients’ recovery time.

Dr. Santiago Horgan, a NOTES surgeon and director of UC San Diego’s Center for the Future of Surgery, says his group plans further operations if the latest patients continue to do well.

But the OpNotes blog reports:

Dr. Horgan warns, however, that NOTES is not yet ready for wide adoption, and that years of technical development are still needed. “The problem is that eighty percent of the endoscope still goes to the light and the camera, while only twenty percent goes to the working channels,” he said. “It needs to be the other way around. Although companies like USGI have been working on better platforms, we still don’t have an ideal NOTES scope.”

Medical blogger Dr. Rob Oliver is harsher in his evaluation of how NOTES appendectomies compare to the current standard for laparoscopic appendectomies. He calls it a “really, really stupid idea”:

Take an operation that is typically performed safely in less then 30 minutes with minimal pain or morbidity and turn it into one that lasts 3 hours, introduces unnecessary risk, and has no conceivable advantage. What do they call that at the University of California San Diego? They call it progress (!!!!!) …

The absence of three nearly invisible 3-5mm scars, with no advantage in length of stay, with the addition of a hole in your rectum, vagina, or stomach (which all can leak), with significantly prolonged surgery adding cost, increased nausea, and increased risks of deep vein thrombosis is somehow supposed to be an improvement? This is a technique that needs to be put back in a holding pattern indefinitely where safe procedures exist until you can come up with some compelling rationale for doing them.

Not surprisingly, USGI’s approach is more upbeat:

Operating through the body’s natural orifices offers promise for less pain, shorter hospital stays, reduced risk of wound infection and no external scars – and is rapidly becoming an option demanded by patients and healthcare providers. USGI offers surgeons and gastroenterologists the tools they need to offer millions of potential patients a less invasive surgical option.

Related links:

• All a-Twitter at 21st Century Surgery conference
• Surgeons remove diseased appendix through mouth, vagina

Valeant Pharmaceuticals of Aliso Viejo on Friday announced plans for cutting 1,380 jobs as part of a radical corporate transformation that new Chief Executive J. Michael Pearson outlined in March.

Valeant had 3,001 employees as of the end of last year.

The drug maker, which has been losing money for years, will focus its efforts on neurology and dermatology drugs. It is also seeking partners to help it develop two promising new drugs – retigabine, a treatment for epilepsy, and taribavirin, for Hepatitis C.

Valeant has already trimmed its work force by 130 employees in the United States and Mexico. It said it plans a further 1,250 cutbacks within the next 12 months as it sells its European subsidiaries and other units.

Related stories:

• Valeant Pharmaceuticals gets overhaul
• Valeant loses CEO, finds a prestigious replacement
• Valeant’s $91 million deal meshes with research cutback plan

This post includes information from the Associated Press.

Posts about D-Link’s booth babes and the AeA trade group’s innovation awards are the new entries on this week’s list of the most popular “Inside Innovation” blog posts.

For a fourth week, the post “11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft” was the No. 1 best-read post on the blog.

No. 2 was the list of AeA award winners.

No. 3 was the perpetually popular “Technology and the stars.”

No. 4 was another returnee: “Botox can reach the brain, researchers say.”

No. 5 was “For D-Link, booth babes are this week’s networking technique.”

Many plastic surgeons in San Diego County have seen business fall off as the economy softens, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.

The same phenomenon has already been reported in Orange County and Los Angeles County.

“When people have choices to make about where they are going to spend their money and they are worried about jobs and house payments, elective surgery goes lower on the list,” said Steve Green, executive director of the Scripps Mercy Surgery Pavilion outpatient center in San Diego.

Related links:

• Economy nips at O.C. plastic surgery
• Cosmetic surgery business sags as purse strings tighten (Los Angeles)

Plastic surgery might soon be a “must have career tool,” says work-life advice blogger Penelope Trunk.

In her “Brazen Careerist” blog, she writes:

All else being equal, a good-looking woman will negotiate better for a company than anyone else — even a good-looking man, according to research by Sara Solnick of the University of Miami and Maurice Schweitzer from Wharton. Good-looking women drive harder bargains than everyone else, and good-looking women get more concessions than anyone else.

She cites Chelsea Clinton as an example of the potential benefits of plastic surgery:

She did a few changes just as she hit the adult world as a consultant at McKinsey. She’s not an idiot, and she certainly does not seem obsessed by her appearance. But she realized that she was not great looking, and the plastic surgery seems to have made some improvements.

And just ten years ago, I remember talking with my friends about how gross Botox is. But my friend Sharon, who is a hairstylist in Los Angeles, says that the majority of her clients — who range from normal housewives to corporate lawyers — have had some sort of Botox injection. She says it’s so mainstream in Los Angeles that it’s almost a statement if you don’t have it.

Did you think booth babes at trade shows were a thing of the pre-feminist past?

Not so for Fountain Valley wireless networking company D-Link, as is evident in this photo a reader submitted after visiting the D-Link booth at this week’s Interop 2008 networking conference in Las Vegas.

The latest wireless routers from D-Link apparently aren’t sexy enough to attract the crowd that D-Link wants. But will the men who visit the D-Link booth be able to concentrate on the company’s networking technology?

Other local companies at the show include:

• 8e6 Technologies
• High Tower
• Multi-Factor Authentication
• QLogic
• Zyxel

CoreValve, the Irvine-based developer of replacement heart valves, announced today that it has hired Medtronic executive Daniel T. Lemaitre (pictured) as its chief executive officer.

He replaces Dr. Jacques Séguin, inventor of CoreValve’s ReValving system, who will remain as chairman of the board.

CoreValve competes against Edwards Lifesciences of Irvine, which makes a similar valve. Both companies’ devices are implanted through minimally invasive surgery using a catheter.

Both companies’ valve replacement systems are on sale in Europe, and Edwards has begun clinical trials in the United States in a quest for approval to sell its valve and catheter here.

At medical-device giant Medtronic, Lemaitre has led the company’s corporate strategic planning and corporate development efforts since 2006, CoreValve said.

Rob Michiels remains as chief operating officer of CoreValve.

For more information about the CoreValve-Edwards rivalry, see previous posts. See also videos of the CoreValve system and the competing Edwards systems.

The mutual love fest between UCI engineering school dean Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos and Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli was a dramatic high point at last night’s awards dinner of the AeA electronics trade group.

Here are excerpts from their comments, as captured in my series of live posts to the Register Web site via Twitter software. Below that is a full transcript of my posts from the AeA awards presentations.

In this first excerpt, all the first comments are from Samueli, followed by comments from Alexopoulos.

• Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli presents Engineering the Future Lifetime Achievement Award.
• Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Dr. Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos, dean of UCI’s Samueli School of Engineering.
• Samueli says Alexopoulos will soon retire from UCI and start a new career at Broadcom.
• Alexopoulos added these to UCI engineering school — fuel cell research, nano, IT, biomed engineering dept, pervasive communications.
• Other changes in 10-year Alexopoulos tenure: were 1,150 undergrads, now 2,200 undergrads
• Other changes in 10-year Alexopoulos tenure: were 340 grad students, now 893
• Other changes in 10-year Alexopoulos tenure at UCI Eng: were 68 faculty members; now 105 faculty. From $7.7m to $22m/yr research funds
• Other changes in 10-year Alexopoulos UCI Eng. tenure: $1.5m endowment has grown to $60 million.
• Other changes in 10-year Alexopoulos UCI Eng. tenure: were no endowed chairs; now 14 endowed chairs. Ranking was 49th, now 37th in U.S.
• Alexopoulos: UCI Engineering School’s national ranking will rise quickly in near future.
• Alexopoulos: Henry Samueli is the person nearest to perfection of anyone I have met.
• Alexopoulos: I have never heard Henry Samueli say a bad word about anybody.
• Alexopoulos: Samueli’s gift of $20m to School of Engineering was transformational.

Below are Tuesday’s complete Twitter posts in chronological order. Typographical errors have not been corrected.

To follow my Twitter posts on future topics and day to day, go to my Twitter page. Read the rest of this entry »

A dean at UCI, an angel investor with a popular audio podcast on innovation, executives in two medical companies and the leader of a high-tech equipment company were some of the individuals honored by the local chapter of the AeA electronics trade group at its awards dinner tonight.

Corporate winners included three Irvine companies — patient-monitoring equipment maker Masimo Corp., named outstanding medical device company; cell-phone power amplifier maker Axiom Microdevices, outstanding private company; and business software developer Epicor Software Corp., outstanding public company.

Individual honorees included:

• Dr. Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos (pictured), dean of The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, UC Irvine, who won the AeA Engineering the Future Lifetime Achievement Award.
• Frank Peters of The Frank Peters Show, named High-Impact Person of the Year. Read the rest of this entry »

3-D visual presentation developers Eon Reality of Irvine won an AeA 2008 Product of the Year award today for its I-Catcher Mini technology, which creates stereoscopic 3D images.

The local chapter of the AeA electronics trade group made the presentation at its awards dinner tonight in Irvine.

For more information on Eon Reality’s work, see the “Inside Innovation” post from a few months ago titled “Eon Reality struts its projected simulated 3D stuff.”

Anita B. Bessler from heart-valve maker Edwards Lifesciences of Irvine won this year’s Outstanding Woman in Technology Award from the local chapter of the AeA electronics trade group, although a corporate reorganization will soon move her out of her position.

In June, Bessler will halt her day-to-day work as Edwards’ corporate vice president for heart valve and cardiac surgery systems.  For two years, she will continue working for Edwards to help coordinate work with surgeons worldwide.

She is one of three Edwards leaders who are leaving the company as part of a corporate reorganization that changes the executives who report directly to Chief Executive Michael Mussallem. The reorganization has also lowers the average age of Edwards executives.

This is the company’s bio of her:

Anita B. Bessler, age 60. From 2000 to 2001, she served as Corporate Vice President, Cardiac Surgery of the company. Bessler joined Baxter in 1988 as Vice President and General Manager of Sales and Marketing for Baxter’s Hyland division, and in 1991 became President, Cardiac Surgery for Baxter’s CardioVascular business. Prior to her tenure with Baxter, from 1986 until 1988 she was Senior Executive Vice President with the USV/Armour Pharmaceutical Division of Rhone Poulenc Rohrer. From 1976 until 1986, Bessler held senior management positions with Revlon’s Healthcare Group. She is a graduate of Indiana University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing and economics.

For more information on Edwards and its work developing heart-valve replacements and new minimally invasive systems for implanting them, see previous “Inside Innovation” blog posts and columns.

I’ll be reporting live from tonight’s AeA innovation awards dinner, using Twitter software to send updates to OCRegister.com’s Money page.

That means employees, family and friends of local high-tech companies, biomedical enterprises, and schools will be able to see who won awards immediately after they’re announced. To find out which of the previously announced finalists win the innovation awards, visit the Money page of the OCRegister.com after 6 p.m., when the dinner begins. Each time you refresh that page you’ll see any new posts I’ve sent from Twitter since the last time you updated.

This is the same technique I used to report live from the last week’s New Frontiers in Medicine & Surgery conference in Irvine. To see how that process worked, read “All a-Twitter at 21st Century Surgery conference,” a blog post that includes all of that day’s Twitter posts.

The local chapter of the AeA electronics trade group will unveil its 15th Annual High-Tech Innovation Award winners at an awards dinner tonight in Irvine.

Honorees are from Orange County and the Inland Empire. These are the finalists and their categories: Read the rest of this entry »

World of Warcraft and the world of cosmetic medicine battled for the top spots in the “Inside Innovation” blog last week.

For a third week, the post “11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft” was the No. 1 best-read post on the blog.

Cosmetic medicine claimed the rest of the Top 5.

No. 2 was “Priscilla’s face divides cosmetic docs; what about you?” which returned for a third week. As readers continue to respond to that post’s survey, the overall result has remained the same: 81 percent say her face looks fake, while 12 percent say it looks fine for a 62-year-old.

No. 3 was “Economy nips at O.C. plastic surgery.”

No. 4 was “Technology and the stars.”

No. 5 was “Asian Americans embrace plastic surgery mo