MASSDEVICE ON CALL — The U.K.’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service will convene later this month to consider accusations against Dr. Michael Mullen and charges that he knowingly falsified data in a trial of NMT Medical’s StarFlex device as an effective treatment for migraines.
Mullen in 2007 allegedly submitted to the XXI Nordic Congress of Cardiology in Finland information that he knew to be false. Mullen submitted the same abstract at the American College of Cardiology conference in 2006, Heartwire reported.
The StarFlex implant won FDA pre-market approval in April 2009. Boston-based NMT began analyzing its closure trial data a year later, reporting in June 2010 that the device failed to meet clinical endpoints,.
That news sent its stock plunging 79% in a single day. By August 2010, the company’s poor stock performance had drawn a 1st de-listing warning from the NASDAQ stock exchange. NASDAQ finally ran out of patience with NMT and moved to de-list the company’s stock in February 2011.
By April of that year, NMT announced that it didn’t have enough money to pay auditors and wouldn’t file an annual report with the SEC. Later that month, the company began liquidating its assets in an attempt to repay creditors.
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