Galway Advertiser 2004/2004_01_15/GA_1501_E1_008.pdf 

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8 N E W S

Galway Advertiser

January 15 2004

Boston Scientific awaiting US approval to begin selling groundbreaking stent
BY JULIE TIERNEY There was good news for Galway's largest employer this week when a federal inspection team indicated it would recommend US Food and Drug Administration approval of the facility to produce a device which keeps arteries open for sale on the US market. The Taxus drug coated stent, made by Boston Scientific Corp, is a tiny wire mesh tube that props open surgically cleared arteries and delivers medicine that keeps arteries from reclogging. It has proven to keep heart arteries open more effectively than uncoated devices. The US Food and Drug Administration completed a week-long inspection of the Ballybrit Industrial Estate plant last week. The inspection team indicated it would recommend that the FDA approve the facility to make the stent for the US market, Boston Scientific said. A similar inspection of one of the company's stent manufacturing operations in Maple Grove, Minnesota is scheduled in three weeks time. "We have designed the Maple Grove manufacturing [facility] to be a 100 per cent mirror image of what they saw in Galway," said Boston Scientific chief financial officer Larry Best during a presentation at the JP Morgan Chase & Co Healthcare conference in San Francisco. "Taxus, simply stated, has exceeded all of our expectations," he added. "Worldwide stent sales rose 23 per cent to $155 million from $126 million in the fourth quarter. In Europe, stent sales increased four-fold to $58 million from $14 million." The company expects Taxus to be approved no sooner than the end of February, Best said, but certainly by the end of the quarter. The stent should be approved in Japan, the world's second-largest stent market, in early 2005, he said. Investors cheered the news, sending shares of Boston Scientific up 2.12 per cent in early morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange midweek. Boston Scientific chief executive Jim Tobin in a statement said the Taxus drug-coated stent posted healthy fourth-quarter sales increases in Europe and other international markets where it is already approved. He said the company is prepared to launch the highly anticipated product on the more lucrative US market later this quarter. Boston Scientific must now clear an inspection of its plant in Maple Grove, Minnesota, scheduled for the first week of February.

Further remand for Gort man following 12,000 drugs haul
A Gort man who is charged with being in possession of 12,000 worth of cannabis resin, which he claimed was for his own use, was further remanded in custody when he appeared before Galway District Court this week. Anthony Burke (34), Ennis Road, Gort, has been in custody since his arrested on January 3, charged with having the

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drug in his possession for the purpose of selling or supplying it to others at Wellpark Grove, Galway. He is further charged with obstructing detective garda Michael Kelleher by running away as the garda was about to search him. Burke told the court he had been employed as a security man prior to his

arrest and he didn't have the opportunity to contact a solicitor since being taken into custody. Inspector Noel Kelly applied to have the accused further remanded in custody to appear before Harristown District Court on January 22 next. Judge Mary Fahy

granted Burke Free Legal Aid and appointed solicitor, Sean Acton to represent him. She further remanded the accused in custody with consent to bail on his own surety of 1,000 and one independent surety of 5,000 to appear before Harristown District Court on January 22.

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