Customer outreach and other marketing efforts may be starting to pay off for Biosphere Medical Inc.
The Rockland, Mass.-based maker of microscopic polymer beads reported $8.1 million in sales during the three months ended June 30, with a 13 percent jump in U.S. sales of the company’s interventional gynecology products pacing much of that gain.
The net loss for the period was $677,000, which compares with a $1.3 million loss on $7.6 million in sales during the June 2008 quarter.
Biosphere CEO Richard Faleschini said the company’s use of community health talks, or CHTs, was working well to expand acceptance of embolotherapy as an appropriate tool to treat fibroids — benign but often painful tumors — in the uterus afflicting as many as one in four women over 45 years of age.
The CHTs began at five hospitals early this year and have since expanded to 13 U.S. cities, with over 1,700 women with symptomatic fibroids participating in the sit-down seminars with physicians and BioSphere sales reps. Those talks led about 550 women to seek individual consultations, with a “high percentage of those consults” leading to procedures using Biosphere embolics, Faleschini said.
Overall U.S. sales during the second quarter reached $6.7 million, which includes about $1.6 million in sales of embolics used in oncology treatments.
Faleschini also said the company is continuing to talk with U.S. regulators about criteria for a trial BioSphere hopes to start early next year of drug-eluting microspheres to treat liver cancer patients.
