UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

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MEDICAL DEVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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NEUROLOGICAL DEVICES PANEL

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GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND

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TUESDAY,

AUGUST 5, 2003

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The Panel met in the Walker and Whetstone Ballrooms, at the Holiday Inn,
Gaithersburg, 2 Montgomery Village Avenue, Gaithersburg, Maryland, at
10:00 a.m., with Robert W. Hurst, M.D., Chair, presiding.

[PRESENT]{.underline}:

ROBERT W. HURST, M.D., Chairperson

KYRA J. BECKER, M.D., Voting Member

FERNANDO G. DIAZ, M.D., Ph.D., Voting Member

JONAS H. ELLENBERG, Ph.D., Voting Member

STEPHEN J. HAINES, M.D., Voting Member

STEVEN G. MASSAQUOI, M.D., Ph.D., Voting Member

CRISSY E. WELLS, R.T., M.B.A., M.H.S.A., Consumer

Representative

ANDREW K. BALO, Industry Representative

[PRESENT]{.underline}: (cont\'d)

MARY E. JENSEN, M.D., Consultant-Deputized Voting

Member

THOMAS L. KURT, M.D., M.P.H., Consultant-Deputized

Voting Member

FONG Y. TSAI, M.D., Consultant-Deputized Voting Member

CELIA WITTEN, Ph.D., M.D., FDA Representative

JANET SCUDIERO, M.S., Executive Secretary

[ALSO]{.underline} [PRESENT]{.underline}:

CAROL BENKENDORF, Ph.D., Toxdata Systems, Inc.

RICHARD CHIACCHIERINI, Ph.D., R.P Chiacchierini &

Associates

ANN COSTELLO, Ph.D., M.D.M., FDA

JUDY CHEN, M.S., FDA

GARY DUCKWILER, M.D., Principal Investigator, UCLA

Medical Center

PETER L. HUDSON, Ph.D., FDA

DONALD W. LARSEN, M.D., DSMB, Chair UCLA Medical

Center

BILL PATTERSON, Ph.D., Senior Director, Research &

Development

LEE PRIDE, M.D., Clinical Investigator, University of

Texas Southwestern Medical Center

STEPHEN P. RHODES, M.S., Chief, General and Plastic

Surgery Devices Branch

AMY WALTERS, V.P., Quality Assurance, Clinical &

Regulatory, MTI

TOM WILDER, President/CEO, MTI

A-G-E-N-D-A

[PAGE]{.underline}

I. Call to Order

‑‑ Conflict of Interest and

Deputization to Voting Member

Status Statements 4

‑‑ Panel Introductions 9

‑‑ Update since November 2000

Meeting 16

II\. Open Public Hearing \--

III\. Micro Therapeutics, Inc. (MTI)

Presentation on PMA 030004, Onyx

Liquid Embolic System

‑‑ Amy Walters 15

‑‑ Bill Patterson 18

‑‑ Gary Duckwiler 30

‑‑ Lee Pride 55

‑‑ Donald W. Larsen 61

IV\. FDA Presentation

‑‑ Peter I. Hudson 98

‑‑ Ann Costello 109

‑‑ Judy Chen 129

V. Panel Deliberations

‑‑ Thomas I. Kurt 136

‑‑ Mary Lee Jensen 144

‑‑ Jonas H. Ellenberg 152

VI\. Second Open Public Hearing \--

VII\. FDA and Sponsor Summations 221

VIII\. Concluding Deliberations and

Vote 237

IX\. Adjournment 267

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

(10:31 a.m.)

MS. SCUDIERO: Good morning, everyone. We are ready to begin the 15th
meeting of the Neurological Devices Panel. My name is Jan Scudiero. I\'m
the Executive Secretary of this panel, and a reviewer in the Division of
General, Restorative, and Neurological Devices.

First we have some housekeeping matters. If you haven\'t already done so
‑‑ and I\'m sure you already have ‑‑ please sign the attendance sheets
that are on the tables. The agenda information and website information
on upcoming meetings, summary minutes, transcripts are also at these
tables.

I am required to read two statements into the record ‑‑ the deputization
of temporary voting members and the conflict of interest statement that
was prepared for this meeting.

First is the appointment to temporary voting status. \"Pursuant to the
authority granted under the Medical Devices Advisory Committee Charter
dated October 27, 1990, and amended April 20, 1995, I appoint the
following as voting members of the Neurological Devices Panel for the
duration of this meeting on August 5, 2003 ‑‑ Mary E. Jensen, M.D.;
Thomas L. Kurt, M.D., M.P.H.; Fong Y. Tsai, M.D.

\"For the record, these people are special government employees and are
consultants to this panel or another panel under the Medical Devices
Advisory Committee. They have undergone the customary conflict of
interest review and have reviewed the material to be considered at this
meeting.\" This is signed by Dr. David W. Feigal, Jr., Director, Center
for Devices and Radiological Health on July 22, 2003.

The conflict of interest statement is, \"The following announcement
addresses conflict of interest issues associated with this meeting and
is made part of the record to preclude even the appearance of an
impropriety.

\"To determine if any conflict existed, the Agency reviewed the
submitted agenda for this meeting and all financial interests reported
by the panel participants. The conflict of interest statutes prohibit
special government employees from participating in matters that could
affect their or their employers\' financial interests.

\"However, the agency has determined that the participation of certain
members and consultants, the need for whose services outweighs the
potential conflict of interest involved, is in the best interest of the
government.

\"We would like to note for the record that the agency took into
consideration certain matters regarding Drs. Robert Hurst and Mary
Jensen. These panelists reported current and/or past interest in firms
at issue, but in matters that are not related to today\'s agenda. The
agency has determined, therefore, that they may participate fully in the
panel\'s deliberations.

\"In the event that the discussions involve any other products or firms
not already on the agenda for which an FDA participant has a financial
interest, the participant should excuse him or herself from such
involvement, and the exclusion will be noted for the record.

\"With respect to all other participants, we ask in the interest of
fairness that all persons making statements or presentations disclose
any current or previous financial involvement with any firm whose
products they may wish to comment upon.\"

The next tentatively-scheduled meeting for this panel was September 24th
and 25th. It was canceled because there was no agenda item. There is one
more tentatively-scheduled meeting for this calendar year, and that is
December 8th and 9th.

This is the last meeting for Dr. Robert Hurst and Dr. Steve Massaquoi.
Their voting member terms expire November 30th. On behalf of the
division, I would like to thank them for their service to the panel. We
ordered plaques for you some time ago, but they have not yet arrived,
but we\'ll send them on later.

And Dr. Witten would like to say a few comments.

DR. WITTEN: I just want to echo Jan\'s thanks to Dr. Hurst and Dr.
Massaquoi for serving on our panel. We really appreciate the time and
energy and effort that our panel members put forward in helping us with
our work. And we\'ll certainly miss the two of you on our advisory panel
and hope that we\'ll be able to continue to perhaps work with you as
consultants afterwards.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks.

MS. SCUDIERO: Okay. And now I\'d like to turn the panel meeting over to
Dr. Robert Hurst, our chair. Dr. Hurst?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Good morning. My name is Dr. Robert Hurst. I\'m
Chairperson of the Neurological Devices Panel. I am interventional
neuroradiologist at University of Pennsylvania.

At this meeting, the panel will be making a recommendation to the FDA on
the approvability of Premarket Approval Application, or PMA, P030004 for
the Micro Therapeutics, Incorporated Onyx Liquid Embolic System intended
for use in the treatment of brain arteriovenous malformations when
embolization is indicated to minimize blood loss or to reduce the brain
AVM size prior to surgery.

Before we begin this meeting, I\'d like to ask our distinguished panel
members, who are generously giving their time to help the FDA in the
matter being discussed today, and other FDA staff seated at this table,
to introduce themselves.

Maybe we could just start from my left and work our way around. Please
state your name, area of expertise, position, and affiliation.

MR. BALO: My name is Andy Balo. I\'m Vice President of Regulatory
Clinical and Quality at DexCom, Inc.

MS. WELLS: My name is Criss Wells. I\'m the Director of the Western
Regional Community Clinical Oncology Program, and I\'m the consumer
representative on this panel.

DR. KURT: My name is Tom Kurt. I\'m a Medical Toxicologist, a
consultant, former FDA medical officer, and a founder of the regional
poison center in Dallas at UT Southwestern Medical School.

DR. TSAI: I\'m Fong Tsai. I\'m a professor of radiology and neurosurgery
at the UCI Medical Center. I\'m an intervention neuroradiologist.

DR. HAINES: I\'m Steve Haines. I\'m a neurosurgeon and Chairman of the
Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of South Carolina
in Charleston.

DR. BECKER: My name is Kyra Becker, and I\'m a stroke neurologist and
critical care neurologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

DR. MASSAQUOI: My name is Steve Massaquoi. I\'m a movement disorders
neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and assistant professor
of health sciences and technology at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

DR. DIAZ: My name is Fernando Diaz. I am the Chief Medical Officer of
the Detroit Medical Center and professor of neurosurgery at the Wayne
State University.

DR. JENSEN: I\'m Lee Jensen. I\'m Director of Interventional
Neuroradiology at the University of Virginia, and a professor of
radiology.

DR. ELLENBERG: I\'m Jonas Ellenberg. I am a biostatistician at Westat. I
spent 26 years as the Director of Biometry at the Neurology Institute at
NIH.

DR. WITTEN: I\'m Celia Witten. The Division Director of DGR&D, which is
the reviewing division at FDA that has responsibility for this product.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: I\'d like to note for the record that the voting
members present constitute a quorum as required by 21 CFR Part 14.

Next, Mr. Stephen Rhodes, Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Devices Branch, will update the panel on several matters deliberated on
in the last meeting of the panel in November 2000.

Mr. Rhodes.

MR. RHODES: Thank you, Dr. Hurst, and good morning. I\'m Stephen Rhodes.
I\'m the Branch Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Devices
Branch here in the Division of General, Restorative, and Neurological
Devices.

Welcome, members of the panel, and members of the public, and
manufacturers, to this one-day meeting of the Neurological Devices
Panel.

This panel last met in November of 2000, at which time you made
recommendations on clinical trial issues for devices intended for the
prevention and treatment of stroke and neurological protective cooling
devices.

On August 9, 2002, FDA approved an HDE for Guidant Corporation\'s
Neurolink System. The Neurolink System is indicated for the treatment of
patients with recurrent intracranial stroke attributable to
atherosclerotic disease refractory to medical therapy in intracranial
vessels ranging from 2.5 to 4.5 millimeters in diameter, with greater
than 50 percent stenosis.

On September 11, 2002, FDA approved an HDE for Smart Therapeutics\'
Neuroform Microdelivery Stent System. The Neuroform Stent is intended to
be used with embolic coils for the treatment of wide neck, intracranial,
saccular aneurysms arising from a parent vessel with a diameter of two
‑‑ between two and 4.5 millimeters.

And on April 15, 2003, FDA approved an HDE for Medtronic\'s Activa
Distonia Therapy Kit indicated for unilateral or bilateral stimulation
in the management of chronic, intractable primary distonia in patients
seven years of age or above.

Additionally, two regulation actions that this panel recommended in
previous meetings are undergoing review and clearance in the Center for
Devices. The first is the classification final rule for human dura
mater, and the second is the reclassification proposed rule for
neurological and cardiovascular embolization devices.

Today you will make a recommendation on a premarket approval application
from Micro Therapeutics, Incorporated, for the Onyx Liquid Embolic
System intended for the presurgical embolization of brain arteriovenous
malformations.

Panel members, we appreciate your commitment. And members of the public
who have requested time to address the panel, we appreciate your
comments. And to our PMA sponsor, we appreciate your participation in
presenting the information you have to the panel and answering questions
that the panel may have.

Thank you for your attention.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you, Mr. Rhodes.

We will now proceed with the open public hearing portion of the meeting.
We need to ask at this time that all persons addressing the panel speak
clearly into the microphone as the transcriptionist is dependent on this
means of providing an accurate record of this meeting.

We are also requesting that persons making statements during the open
public hearing clearly state his or her name, affiliation, and the
nature of any financial interest he or she may have in this or another
medical devices company, if any, and disclose if anyone besides yourself
paid for your transportation and/or accommodations.

Prior to the meeting we received no requests to speak in the open public
hearing. Is there anyone here who\'d like to address the panel now?
Please raise your hand, and come forward to the microphone.

Okay. We\'ll go ahead and proceed to the open public meeting.

Since there are no requests to speak, other requests to speak rather, we
will now proceed to the Micro Therapeutics, Incorporated, MTI,
presentation on P030004 for their Onyx Liquid Embolic System intended
for use in the treatment of brain AVMs when embolization is required or
indicated to minimize blood loss or to reduce the brain AVM in size
prior to surgery. Then we break for lunch.

After lunch, we\'ll have the FDA presentations, and then the panel will
deliberate on the approvability of the PMA. Before the panel votes,
there will be another open public hearing and a time for FDA and sponsor
summations.

I would like to remind public attendees at this meeting that while this
meeting is open for public observation, public attendees may not
participate except at the specific request of the panel.

We\'ll begin with the MTI presentation. The first MTI speaker is Ms. Amy
Walters, Vice President for Quality Assurance, Clinical and Regulatory
Affairs. She will introduce the other MTI presenters.

Ms. Walters.

MS. WALTERS: Thank you very much, Dr. Hurst. On behalf of MTI, I\'d like
to thank all of the panel members for your time and attention today, as
well as the members of FDA who are very much involved in the review
process. It was a very productive and interactive review process, and we
appreciate all the time and dedication that went into making today
possible.

Just some background on Micro Therapeutics. We are a company located in
Irvine, California, dedicated to the development and manufacture of
minimally-invasive medical devices for diagnosis and treatment of
vascular diseases and neurovascular diseases. We were incorporated in
1993 and have 200 employees.

Today we\'ll be considering our PMA application. Today the subject
matter will be the Onyx Liquid Embolic System ‑‑ an artificial
embolization device intended for use in the treatment of brain
arteriovenous malformation when embolization is indicated to minimize
blood loss or reduce the BAVM size prior to surgery.

Just some history on the PMA process. The clinical trial commenced in
April of 2001. Our PMA was submitted on March 14th of this year. We have
completed the BIMO audits as of the end of June, and a quality system
audit as well in mid-June. We had a Day 100 meeting with the agency in
early July, and preparation for today\'s panel meeting.

Attending specialists that will be participating today include Dr. Gary
Duckwiler, who is a principal investigator for this study. Dr. Duckwiler
is professor of radiological sciences at UCLA.

In addition, we have Donald Larsen, who is the Chairman of our Data
Safety Monitoring Board. Dr. Larsen is associate professor of
interventional neuroradiological surgery in ‑‑ of interventional
neuroradiology in USC.

And Dr. Lee Pride, who is a clinical investigator in the trial,
assistant professor of radiology and neurosurgery at UT Southwestern.

Additional consulting specialists that are present today are Dr. Carol
Benkendorf, our toxicologist; and on statistics, Dr. Richard
Chiacchierini.

A brief overview of today\'s agenda. Following this introduction we\'ll
hear from Dr. Bill Patterson on the device description and principle of
operation, followed by our preclinical testing review.

At that point, Dr. Duckwiler, our principal investigator, will review
the AVM disease state and the treatment objective, followed by a
discussion of the pivotal clinical trial data. At that time, Dr. Larsen
and Dr. Lee Pride will also be giving some comments.

Finally, we\'ll finish up with the physician training program. This is
included in your panel packs, but we\'ll have a little more in-depth
discussion of the processes and the tips and techniques.

And with that, I will hand it over to Dr. Bill Patterson to review the
introduction to the device.

DR. PATTERSON: Good morning, members of the panel and to our colleagues
at FDA. It\'s my pleasure to be here today. My name is Bill Patterson.
I\'m the Senior Director of R&D at Micro Therapeutics.

I have two presentations for you today. One is an introduction to the
device itself, the Onyx Liquid Embolic System, followed by a brief
summary of the preclinical testing that was submitted as part of our
PMA. So we\'ll begin with the introduction to the device.

And the indication for use of this product, the Onyx Liquid Embolic
System, is an artificial embolization device. It embolizes brain
arteriovenous malformations and is meant to minimize blood loss or
reduce BAVM size prior to surgery.

Onyx is based on the physical property of polymer solubility. It\'s
composed of three components ‑‑ ethylene/vinyl alcohol co-polymer or
EVH. Now, polyethylene and polyvinyl alcohol here, polyethylene,
polyvinyl alcohol here, are well-known in the medical implant field.
There\'s polyethylene in the orthopedic implants, and then polyvinyl
alcohol has been used as an embolic material in the brain AVM
application.

The ethylene/vinyl alcohol co-polymer or EVH, here in white on this
figure, is dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide. Dimethyl sulfoxide is known
medically and is currently used in a therapeutic application as a
treatment for interstitial cystitis. DMSO here in the beaker in the
figure of clear liquid.

Tantalum for radiopacity is added to this as a suspended element, and
tantalum is, again, well-known in this brain AVM application as part of
the Cortis TRUFILL product for brain AVM.

As I mentioned, the principle of operation is polymer solubility. Onyx
comes as a pre-formulated liquid. In a two milliliter vial, there is 1.5
mL\'s of liquid, and you see it pours as a fluid. Finally, when it comes
into contact with aqueous solution, the DMSO being readily miscible with
water diffuses into the aqueous solution, leaving behind the insoluble
polymer now in the aqueous solution that fully encapsulates the
tantalum.

You see there is no evidence of extraneous black material. This is a
cohesive, coherent mass. It forms a soft, spongy cast. Here it\'s just
allowed to freely form its own mass in the presence of the beaker at the
injection site.

The history of use of this material is broad. The first vascular
embolization was in 1996. We CE marked it for brain AVM in 1999.
Recently, it was FDA cleared for GERD as a product known as Entex ‑‑
excuse me, Enteryx. GERD is gas esophageal reflux disease ‑‑
gastro-esophageal reflux disease, excuse me.

And it is ‑‑ I want to point out that Enteryx is the identical formula
to the brain AVM Onyx 34, which I\'ll speak to in a minute. And here I
just show you an example morphology of the soft, spongy cast made in
that prior slide in the beaker. You see the nice, smooth exterior here,
and then a cross-sectional cut through that internal surface.

The Onyx Liquid Embolic System comes in two different viscosities for
the physician to choose the penetration rate into the AVM. There is
Onyx 18, Onyx 34. Here they\'re shown in their respective vials.

And then, finally, we supply a vial of 100 percent DMSO that\'s ‑‑ a
small volume of which ‑‑ .27 mL\'s ‑‑ is used to prime the catheter and
prevent any kind of premature precipitation through the catheter until
the Onyx material exits at the AVM site.

And, finally, all of these components come packaged in a kit. We sell
three syringes that are color-coded for use ‑‑ the yellow syringe for
DMSO, the two white syringes for the Onyx ‑‑ the Onyx of the
physician\'s choice, the viscosity, and then the DMSO ‑‑ the volume.

And then, finally, two catheters are used to deliver this material to
the AVM site ‑‑ a flow directed here known as the UltraFlow catheter,
and then the Rebar catheter and over-the-wire catheter.

That\'s a brief introduction to the device. I\'d like to continue on
with the preclinical testing summary.

We\'ve characterized Onyx both in its liquid form, delivered, and then
as its solid form as a temporary implant. The delivery system
compatibility has been checked with our manufactured catheters and
syringes. The adjunct device compatibility has also been checked with
detachable metal coils and cyanoacrylate adhesive, n-BCA, or more
commonly known as glue.

We have conducted a full panel of ISO 10993 biocompatibility tests. All
of the test results met the requirements of the ISO 10993, with the
exception of this implantation test here at seven days. This had a
greater irritation than the control.

We followed that data up with a one-year intramuscular implant
evaluation in the same model and showed that this greater irritation
than control subsides over the time course of the year period to a mild
to moderate, minimal to mild, inflammatory response that remains local
in that area.

Moving on to the neurovascular animal studies that we have provided in
the PMA, I wanted to take you through the chronology of our studies as
they occurred. In 1994, Chaloupka, et al., published an AJNR, a study
that showed large volumes at high flow rates might ‑‑ of DMSO might
cause angiotoxicity.

Murayama followed that work with acute and chronic model showing that
there was effective embolization if ‑‑ effective embolization and no
angiotoxicity if you gave the volume of Onyx slowly and in small doses.
And in the top figure here I have a histopathology slide from Murayama,
et al. The arrows highlight the vascular channel embolized by the Onyx.

Chaloupka, in 1999, repeated his earlier work and found that using the
Murayama parameters ‑‑ found no DMSO angiotoxicity in the swine AVM
model. Perhaps I should back up for one moment. The swine model uses a
rete morable structure that\'s native to the swine vascular structure.
It\'s a well-known AVM model. Chaloupka and Murayama both used this
model.

Chaloupka, again using that model, found that there was no angiotoxicity
when he followed Murayama\'s parameters. And I\'m showing a slide of
that here in this middle figure.

Finally, Klucznik, et al., in a bit different study, found that Onyx
directly injected into the subarachnoid space resulted in no toxicity
when in contact with neuronal tissue. And in the bottom figure here I\'m
showing the lack of any focal inflammatory response presented in that
paper.

Well, as we\'ve gone through the preclinical review process, questions
have come up regarding a variety of things, and I wanted to take the
time to address those comments, which made sense within this preclinical
summary.

We\'ve had a question from the preclinical review about repeat DMSO
vessel wall exposure and potential adverse effects of that. You\'ve just
seen our animal data showing you the lack of any angiotoxic response
under the parameters that we recommend.

We also point to a histopathological study conducted on seven human AVMs
that were excised after surgical removal. Many of these patients ‑‑ in
fact, the majority of them ‑‑ received multiple embolizations over
stages over a time course of months. Under this condition of repeated
exposure, we found no vascular necrosis in the histopathology, nor any
evidence of rupture, extravasation, fragmentation, or distal migration
of the material.

Two related questions developed. There was a question about, should
there be a recommendation for maximum exposure over a 24-hour period, or
a minimum length of time between embolization procedures? And then,
finally, and a somewhat related question, are there any systemic toxic
effects that have previously been unobserved in the work today?

We point to the DMSO white paper that was submitted as part of the PMA
application prepared by Dr. Carol Benkendorf, who is with us today. In
that toxicology literature on DMSO, DMSO is absorbed readily and
distributed throughout the total body water, regardless of its route of
entry. It is metabolized, then, partially to dimethyl sulfone, DMSO~2~,
and dimethyl sulfide, DMS.

The excretion is complete in approximately two weeks, the DMSO/DMSO~2~
in the urine, and the DMS is exhaled.

The DMSO and the above metabolites, then, have very low acute toxicity
at levels used in the device, and these comparisons were put forth in
the white paper.

Finally, from the drug review, there was a question of, is the amount of
DMSO equivalent to therapeutic drug concentrations? And in this chart
I\'ve tried to compare the maximum total dose of DMSO in milligrams per
kilo and tried to give you some relative benchmarks to guide you.

The LD5 ‑‑ excuse me, the LD50\'s are here from the literature, and
those are data from 100 percent DMSO injections. This 7,600 number here,
there is also numbers that are much higher ‑‑ 11,000 milligrams per
kilo, for example. Those are with injections that are less than 100
percent. So just to let you know that there are higher numbers, but
we\'re going to go with the 100 percent injections as they are more
relevant for our application.

As I mentioned before, DMSO is approved as a therapeutic agent as
RIMSO-50 for the treatment of interstitial cystitis. In my second bullet
here, RIMSO‑50 is administered as a dose of 50 cc\'s of a 50 percent
solution, and that dose is given repeatedly. It\'s given once a week or
once every other week to patients for up to four to eight weeks.

What I\'ve done is calculate as if one single dose has all been absorbed
to the body. It\'s a worst-case estimate, but it\'s better than trying
to estimate what the absorption rates are. And given the multiple time
courses of treatment and the closeness of those treatments, this number
is at least a reasonable comparison.

Moving on to the right, I have Enteryx here. Again, this is for the
treatment of gastro-esophageal reflux disease. It\'s administered ‑‑ a
dose is eight milliliters. It\'s directly implanted around the lower
esophageal sphincter. That dose works out to be about 113 milligrams per
kilo.

And, finally, data that we submitted in the PMA has shown that our early
U.S., outside of the U.S., Onyx experience has given us something of a
worst-case dose of 205 milligrams per kilo, and I\'d like to point out
that calculation a bit.

The maximum single dose that occurred in that data set was 131
milligrams per kilo. We\'ve then added, or pretended if you will, that
there were three additional treatments of this theoretical patient, and
we gave that theoretical patient three additional average doses for that
trial. That was about 25 milligrams per kilo. That is the average dose.
Those were added together, and that\'s where this 205 milligram per kilo
number came from.

Now, in our U.S. Onyx experience here in the clinical trial, our maximum
total dose in the U.S. IDE trial was 206 milligrams per kilo. And it\'s
important to point out that our mean total dose, the mean total dose
given over multiple successive stages, was about 47 milligrams per kilo.
So this is a ‑‑ given our standard deviation in that trial, this is
about a four standard deviation result or a little bit more ‑‑ quite far
away from our average experience.

However, when you take this data together, you see an embolic
application here, you see a therapeutic application here, much larger,
and then all of these levels well away from the LD50 toxicology
literature data.

Well, given our breadth of in vitro and animal studies, in addition to
the preliminary human studies, we believe that this provides a
reasonable assurance that the Onyx Liquid Embolic System is safe for the
brain AVM indication.

Thank you for your time.

Now I\'d like to introduce Dr. Gary Duckwiler to take you through the
clinical portions.

DR. DUCKWILER: Thank you, and thank the panel for inviting us to speak.
Appreciate the opportunity.

My name is Gary Duckwiler. I am interventional neuroradiologist,
professor of radiology, at UCLA Medical Center, and I will be talking
about arteriovenous malformations of the brain as well as the IDE study.

In order for a full financial disclosure, I am a scientific advisor for
Concentric Medical, but I have no financial affiliation with Micro
Therapeutics. I own no stock. The only payments I have received were
during the performance of the study for the CRF forms and the travel
here.

So for those members of the panel who may not be familiar with
arteriovenous malformations of the brain, here is a schematic showing
the arterial supply. It is, if you will, a short circuit between the
artery and vein through channels which are much larger than the normal
capillaries. The normal anatomy is arteries, arterials, capillaries
where oxygen and nutrient exchange will take place, and then through
venules and eventually into the veins, returned to the heart.

The AVM vessels are much larger in diameter than normal capillaries.
That leads to high flow shunting through the vascular malformation into
the venous circuit. And so the AVM itself and the draining veins are
exposed to high pressure, high flow, and there is enlargement of the
arteries serving the AVM.

Typically, multiple arteries are going into the AVM, and one or multiple
veins are draining the AVM.

Here are angio and MRI examples of an arteriovenous malformation. We can
see that in this case, this anterior/posterior view, enlargement of the
anterior cerebral artery. It doesn\'t really taper like the normal
vessels would. It goes directly into this nidus malformation, and then
out these draining veins in this lateral view. So high flow enlargement
of the artery and the draining vein.

Some background. It occurs in .02 to .05 percent of the population.
It\'s a rare disease, and they present variably. They can present with
hemorrhage. Neurologic deficits and seizure are also common
presentations.

But the real danger of these lesions are the ‑‑ is the risk of
hemorrhage. Annual risk may be two to four percent. If there is a
hemorrhage, that risk of hemorrhage perhaps doubles in the first year of
life ‑‑ first year following the hemorrhage, and then it ‑‑ if there is
no further hemorrhage, it may drop down to its normal rate. That means
about 34 percent of patients, over a 20-year period, will experience a
hemorrhage.

The risk of death from a bleeding episode is about 29 percent. So
significant morbidity/mortality associated with the natural history of
brain arteriovenous malformations.

There are three primary ways of treating brain arteriovenous
malformation, and that is surgery, radiosurgery, and embolization.
Surgery has the advantage of totally removing the arteriovenous
malformation, and it can be curative by itself in small AVMs without
additional therapy.

But as we have AVMs in eloquent ‑‑ in other words, portions of the brain
highly organized, responsible for critical function such as strength
sensation, speech, it becomes difficult to excise the AVM when they\'re
in a deep location, where a large exposure is difficult. That can be
difficult for surgery. And large lesions are difficult for single
therapy using surgery.

Radiosurgery can be effective in smaller lesions. But as the AVM size
increases, necessarily the radiation dose must be reduced to avoid
complications of radiation on the adjacent brain, and so large lesions
cannot be effectively treated by radiosurgery. The risk of adjacent
brain tissue is related to the radiation dose.

And there is some controversy in the literature, but since the AVM is
not completely obliterated there is a continued risk of hemorrhage. And
in patients who have presented with hemorrhage, then radiosurgery is
less of a desirable option unless it is not treatable by standard
surgical techniques.

Embolization can be used as a curative procedure, but only with very
small lesions ‑‑ one or two feeding arteries. And the utility of
endovascular embolization is primarily as an adjunct device to either
surgery or radiosurgery. This allows reduction of brain AVM in terms of
its size and through high flow pedicles, treating high flow fistula to
make it easier to operate on these lesions or to perform radiosurgery.

It is also during that procedure testing vessels using evocative
testing, and injection of barbiturates can be performed to map the
lesion and determine if it\'s in an eloquent area or adjacent. And it
can be used for components ‑‑ treatment of the components which are very
difficult surgically.

Staged embolization is often necessary for large AVMs as the
hemodynamics are complicated. There is high flow through the lesion. And
to equalize and stabilize the hemodynamics of the normal adjacent brain,
staged embolization is done to gently alter the flow rates through the
AVM and the adjacent brain.

Treatment and study challenges ‑‑ the nature of AVMs makes it difficult
for both treatment, study planning, and results analysis. AVMs are a
heterogeneous group in terms of their size, the number of feeders,
location, as I discussed about eloquence, and the internal architecture.
Are they multiple small connections or large fistulous connections?

Low prevalence or incidence rates makes it difficult to enroll patients.
And, in fact, for the TRUFILL study, which was ‑‑ that took
approximately three years to enroll those 100 patients for that study.

Variable presentations. As I said, patients present with hemorrhage or
seizures or neurologic deficit, or are asymptomatic. And so analyzing
patient outcomes becomes difficult for study.

What do we currently use for embolization of brain arteriovenous
malformations? The agents which are currently available are particulate,
liquid, and coils. Particulate agents, primarily PVA. Embospheres are
also available.

In general, these agents are non-radiopaque, so you don\'t actually see
them. And when you inject them, you are not certain where they go. They
can pass through the shunt, and so sizing the particulates is important,
so that they don\'t go to the lungs. Past studies have shown that,
indeed, PVA does go to the lungs and into the venous draining structures
of the AVMs.

And because of the size, to deal with the shunts you have to use a
larger size, and so often you require a larger diameter catheter ‑‑
typically, an over-the-wire catheter. And in the TRUFILL PVA study,
there were some complications related to perforations associated with
use of the catheters that we used for PVA embolization.

Liquid agents. The one liquid agent that is typically used is TRUFILL.
It is a tissue adhesive, a cyanoacrylate. And because it is an adhesive,
working time is limited. Typical injection times during embolization for
a single pedicle, a single shot of embolization, is anywhere from three
to 30 seconds. And then, the catheter has to be rapidly removed to avoid
having it glued in place.

The material itself, because it is a tissue adhesive, is very
thrombogenic. One drop of the glue will cause a conglomeration of a
large amount of protein in association. So venous penetration of the
embolic material can be disastrous, as it causes a larger venous
blockade, and the continued pressure into the AVM can cause rupture.

The polymerization time can be adjusted. This can be a benefit or a
problem. If you have a very slow penetration time into the nidus, then
you can adjust the polymerization time. But that requires quite a bit of
training. It involves a determination of path length, diameter, degree
of fistula present, and the rate of injection. So some steep learning
curve to adjust polymerization for this agent.

Coils. Coils are used as an adjunct for AVMs, primarily to block high
flow shunts where it is feared that the material will pass through into
the venous circuit.

So why Onyx? Well, the device characteristics that are beneficial is
that it is non-thrombogenic and non-adherent. So you have a long working
time. You can do a slow, controlled injection. You can actually pause
the injection, do a contrast injection through your guiding catheter,
and assess your result, and then continue on with the injection.

It is radiopaque, and it\'s a liquid agent, so you can use it through a
flow-directed microcatheter, avoiding wire manipulation.

And it\'s preformulated. There are two formulations ‑‑ Onyx 18 and Onyx
34, as was stated previously. So mixing and determination of a certain
mixture of the oil glue is not necessary in this case.

The surgical characteristics, Dr. Pride will discuss that. But
basically, it\'s similar in terms of its resection characteristics to
the other agents.

Moving on to the IDE itself, the objective ‑‑ it\'s a non-inferiority
trial that Onyx and TRUFILL are effective in ‑‑ Onyx is as effective as
TRUFILL in achieving 50 percent brain AVM volume reduction. It was a
multi-center, randomized study, and just in presurgical brain AVM
patients.

The participating sites. Study oversight. There was an independent
physical medical monitor to adjudicate clinical events, and the Chairman
of the Data Safety Monitoring Board was Don Larsen, who is here today.

Hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis was that TRUFILL minus ‑‑ the
TRUFILL embolization success rate minus the Onyx embolization success
rate was less than 20 percent. And using Blackwelder method it was
calculated 50 patients would be necessary in each one.

Study endpoints. Primary endpoint was technical success as measured by
angiographic reduction in brain AVM volume of 50 percent or greater
using the method of Pasqualin. Secondary endpoint was surgical blood
loss and surgical resection time.

Safety endpoints. Primary, rate of serious adverse events, and these
were adjudicated by the Data Safety Monitoring Board to be related to
the system, either the embolic agent itself or the delivery system.
Treatment related, related to the embolization procedure itself. Surgery
related, related to the operative procedure. And disease related as a
natural course of having a brain arteriovenous malformation.

Adverse events were collected through discharge or through three and 12
months if the patient did not go to surgery or had incomplete resection.

Inclusion criteria ‑‑ those are in your handouts. But just to point out
that inclusion criteria was a brain arteriovenous malformation, and the
way it was worded is in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, or dura mater.
This caused some confusion, which I will explain in just a minute.

And just to note that the patient had to be clinically and
neurologically stable for a minimum of 24 hours, and that was so that we
could have a clinical endpoint and determination.

Exclusion criteria are as expected. Of course, if the patient had
another study or had previous embolization, they were excluded.

An example, here is a lateral view of an internal carotid artery showing
the tangle of vessels that represents the brain arteriovenous
malformation, pre-embolization, and then post-embolization you see very
little remaining of the AVM.

Looking at the embolic material itself, here\'s an example of n-BCA, an
example of Onyx, very similar in appearance. And for the core lab
assessing results of the embolization, as there is really no difference
in the appearance in the post-embolization state, essentially blinded
looking at the material itself. Of course, they were blinded from
review, but the material itself gave no suggestion of which agent it
was.

This is the enrollment pathway, randomized, 108 patients. In the n-BCA
arm, there are two late-screened failures. These are patients who were
‑‑ have been excluded from analysis. They include one patient who had a
high flow fistula. It was felt that it was unembolizable. And one
patient who had what is called umpisage feeders to the arteriovenous
malformation.

What that means is the artery that served the arteriovenous malformation
then passed into normal territory, and the branches going to the
arteriovenous malformation were too small to be catheterized by any
method.

As I had mentioned in the inclusion criteria, we did mention the dura,
but it was not our intention to enroll dural fistula. Dural fistulous ‑‑
dural fistula is a separate pathology from brain AVMs, entirely
different, an acquired versus congenital lesion. And once it was
discovered that there were dural fistula patients being enrolled, we had
contacted the centers to exclude these. These are protocol violations.

Then, if we follow the pathway down, we end up with our successes, our
failures, and then a small group of patients in each arm whose films
either were insufficient to make a determination of great ‑‑ of either
greater or less than 50 percent success in brain AVM volume reduction,
or patients who are still undergoing therapy.

Demographics. There were no significant differences.

Similarly presenting symptoms ‑‑ bleeding, seizures, neurologic
deficient. Again, no significant differences.

And baseline neurologic status as measured by GCS, Barthel, and NIH, no
significant differences.

Also, Spetzler-Martin, a grading scale, a searchable grading scale to
assess the difficulty of resection. No differences.

Looking at the material utilized in n-BCA, a mean volume of .38
milliliters were used. Interesting side note, almost 30 percent of the
patients had a formulation picked by the physician which was outside the
recommended formulation for use of n-BCA. In other words, more oil than
is recommended or more glue than is recommended.

I think that speaks to the issue of mixing these two agents together and
determining embolization utility with the n-BCA agent.

With the Onyx, we had the two formulations ‑‑ 18 and 34. Both were
utilized in the trial. Mean volume of Onyx injection is .5 mils, and the
mean duration of injection was 5.44 minutes. As I mentioned previously,
with n-BCA it\'s anywhere from three to 30 seconds. And as I was saying,
one of the benefits of the Onyx material is that you do have this long
working time. It\'s a very slow, controlled injection.

And revisiting some of the preclinical issues, it also points to the
point that the DMSO and the Onyx material are being injected very slowly
into these vessels.

Total DMSO delivery per patient. This was calculated by ‑‑ including the
catheter dead space infusion, and 100 percent of the Onyx equaling 100
percent DMSO. It was an overestimation.

The median was 2.12 milliliters. The mean was higher, as Dr. Patterson
had mentioned. That is because one patient had 14.58 cc\'s injected.
That was four standard deviations above the mean, and it increased the
mean. So when looking at his original preclinical graph with the Onyx
patients, actually the median was lower. It was 2.12.

Stages. Most patients had one or perhaps two stages of embolization. One
patient had seven stages of embolization. One of the questions from the
panel was about multiple injections of DMSO.

Just to describe the technique of embolization again for those who are
not familiar, typically a pedicle one arterial feeder is catheterized
and embolized and occluded. And so when you go back and do another
stage, you select a different feeder. And so the same feeder is not
repeatedly ‑‑ necessarily repeatedly exposed to the DMSO. They have
different feeders at different times.

Interesting that adjunct devices, coils, used primarily to occlude
fistula ‑‑ there was significant radiousage of the coils in the n-BCA
group than the Onyx group.

Now, the results were analyzed in an intent-to-treat analysis, so,
again, going through this pathway. If we go through intent-to-treat,
there were two late screen failures that were excluded, and the dural
fistula patients who were excluded, leaving success and failures and
pending review.

We also analyzed by evaluable patients. Evaluable patients category,
again, excludes late screened failures, the dural fistula, and the
patients who have unanalyzable films or who are still in treatment. So
just including this group.

So if we look at the primary efficacy results of the intent-to-treat
group, in non-inferiority significance it was significant, 79.6 versus
89.1 percent. And if we look at the evaluable patients, again, excluding
those patients who have films that were not able to be analyzed or were
undergoing treatment, it was also significant.

And if we actually take this group and look at a superiority test, that
achieved significance, with the Onyx group achieving the endpoint more
often than the n-BCA group.

And here is the graphic illustration of the intent-to-treat and
evaluable patients, showing that Onyx here in green, significantly more
percent of cases than the 50 percent or greater volume reduction.

Secondary endpoints, estimated surgical blood loss and resection time.
There was a wide range in both of these, but there was no significant
difference between the two groups. And that\'s not to be ‑‑ not
unexpected given the wide heterogeneity of the brain AVMs that are
entered into the trial.

Safety. All events were adjudicated by the Data Safety Monitoring Board,
and they were categorized into serious adverse events, and further
subcategorized into system events related to the device or the delivery
system, treatment related to embolization in general, related to surgery
or related to the disease process. And then, there were events with no
clinical sequelae divided into technical and procedural.

We will concentrate on the serious adverse events. This is a
hierarchical list, so the worst event is listed ‑‑ worst event of course
being death, intracranial hemorrhage, stroke. We looked ‑‑ there were 15
in the n-BCA group, and 19 in the Onyx group. I\'d like to concentrate
on these two patients, two deaths in the Onyx group.

This is the first patient, had a 72 percent AVM reduction from the Onyx
embolization, and the death was associated with surgical procedure.
There was intraoperative and post-operative intracranial hemorrhage. It
was determined that it was most likely due to what is called normal
perfusion pressure breakthrough bleeding.

I alluded to staging of embolizations previously. If there is a rapid
elimination of an arteriovenous malformation, it is possible that the
adjacent brain cannot tolerate the increased perfusion pressure or the
normal perfusion pressure with elimination of the shunt, and there is
bleeding.

And, in fact, in this patient there was bleeding outside in the brain
beyond the margins of the AVM, not felt to be related to the device but
to the surgery.

Second patient death ‑‑ this patient had seven embolizations or a 97
percent AVM reduction. At the end of the embolization, the patient was
neurologically intact. At the end of the surgical procedure, there was a
‑‑ or during the surgical procedure presumably there was a stroke, and
the immediate post-surgical angiogram showed occlusion on the middle
cerebral artery and posterior cerebral artery, which were seen to be
intact after the last embolization episode, so, again, associated with
surgery.

Non-hierarchical list of serious adverse events. If we list all events
that were serious, there were 24 in the n-BCA group and 24 in the Onyx
group ‑‑ an equivalent.

Most important for clinicians is the serious adverse events by
relationship, especially the system-related adverse events ‑‑ in other
words, those related to the device or the delivery system used for that
device. There were two in the n-BCA group. Both of these led to
permanent neurologic deficit. There were four in the Onyx group, two of
which led to permanent neurologic deficit.

The other two which did not lead to permanent neurologic deficit ‑‑ one
was a dissection related to the guiding catheter. Typically, access to
the brain AVM is a guiding catheter inserted from the groin up into the
vessel and neck, and through that the specific delivery catheter is
placed.

For the purpose of this study, the guide catheter was considered part of
the delivery device, although it would be common to both groups. And,
again, it resulted in a vessel section of the neck but no clinical
sequelae. But it\'s considered a serious adverse event, as it required
treatment.

The second patient had a ‑‑ the fourth patient had a transient
neurologic deficit. And this is related to rupture of the microcatheter
use for embolization. It was the FlowRider catheter. Subsequent to that
event, the catheter was pulled and a redesign was made. And subsequently
the UltraFlow microcatheter was utilized, and there were no further
events related to that catheter.

So, again, in summary, two in the n-BCA group leading to permanent
neurologic deficit; four in the Onyx group, only two of which led to
permanent neurologic deficit.

I\'m sorry. There was one case of the permanent neurologic deficit that
was related to difficulty in withdrawal of the microcatheter, and that
is this patient here. There were eight occurrences of difficulty of
removal of the microcatheter in seven patients. In the other six
patients, no clinical sequelae were identified.

I think this goes somewhat to the issue of training. With any new
device, new material, some learning curve is to be expected. If we go
back to the TrueFil randomized study against PVA, there were four
glued-in catheters in that series. And since that time, there has been
greater experience with these ‑‑ with this agent, and in this trial
there were no glued-in catheters in the TrueFil cohort, again indicating
some learning curve with the agents.

Non-serious adverse events ‑‑ 79 in the n‑BCA group, 85 in the Onyx
group. There were no significant differences in the serious adverse
events from the Onyx to n-BCA in total.

Neurologic scales showed no difference, no significant difference
between the two groups. I\'m just showing the NIH stroke scale and those
percent of patients who declined n-BCA group, Onyx, n-BCA, and Onyx.
Again, no significant difference in these groups.

So, in conclusion, our primary non-inferiority hypothesis was
demonstrated that with ‑‑ as measured by greater than 50 percent
reduction in brain AVM size, the intent-to-treat patients significant ‑‑
it was not inferior.

And all evaluable patients ‑‑ again, it was significant, not inferior.
And looking at evaluable patients as a superiority test, it was also
determined that Onyx was superior to TrueFil in achieving this endpoint
of greater than 50 percent reduction in AVM size or volume.

In terms of the safety endpoints, the serious adverse event rate was not
significantly different between the two groups. Also, the clinical scale
measurements were not significantly different, either both
post-embolization or post-surgery between the two groups.

So we feel that these data support a reasonable assurance of safety and
effectiveness of the Onyx Liquid Embolic System.

And with that, I would like to introduce Dr. Lee Pride to discuss the
experience with Onyx from his institution.

DR. PRIDE: Good morning. My name is Lee Pride. I\'m one of the clinical
investigators in this trial, and I\'m an interventional neuroradiologist
at UT Southwestern in Dallas. And I work with a group of vascular
neurosurgeons that include Dr. Duke Sampson and Tom Kapitnik, John
White, and Bob Raplogle. And I work with my partner, Phil Purdy, and I
did ‑‑ personally did all of the embolization procedures at our site.

We were involved in the embolization and ultimate surgical treatment of
nine patients, five of whom were in the glue group, and four of whom
were in the Onyx group. We had a fairly positive experience with this
agent. Its embolic characteristics were quite favorable.

I felt that we were able to control the embolizations better than with
the glue. It allowed for a slow delivery of the agent. It seemed to
penetrate the nidus of the AVM better. And I did not personally
experience difficulty with catheter removal.

Our surgeons were favorably impressed as well, and what they related to
me was that when they would operate on these AVMs that the material was
much more malleable than the glue, and that it was easier to push out of
the way, and the AVM itself, with the material in it, would compress out
of the way from normal brain, making surgical excision easier.

They also related that the electrocautery with the Bovie devices were
able to be used on the Onyx material itself, and that it would retract
away with the AVM tissue and facilitate surgical resection.

Similar comments were echoed by Dr. Robert Miracle at the University of
Florida, who is an endovascular therapist who is neurosurgically trained
and interventionally trained, and he did both the embolizations and the
surgical resections in 19 patients. And he submitted a letter to this
panel that I\'ve seen in the form of an e-mail.

And I\'ve personally spoken with him about his experience, and he echoed
similar comments to what I have said to you all about the positive
experience with this agent. And he had no difficulty with catheter
withdrawal either.

Thank you very much for your time and this opportunity to present our
experience to the panel.

MS. WALTERS: Also, would you like to make a statement on your financial
disclosure, please?

DR. PRIDE: Yes. I have no financial interest in MTI, and I have been
compensated for my time and expenses for travel to come here.

MS. WALTERS: Thank you.

We\'re going to be wrapping up our presentation with a more in-depth
review of our physician training program. This information was presented
in your initial panel pack.

The objective of the physician education program is to ensure that all
participating physicians thoroughly understand the Onyx system,
potential complications, and tips and techniques to ensure safe and
effective embolization agent delivery.

The curriculum consists of a didactic session, an in vitro workshop
where physicians gain hands-on experience in the injection of both DMSO
and Onyx, and catheter tips and techniques, followed by a review of
cases by an experienced physician and an observation of clinical cases
with an experienced physician.

During the didactic session, we reviewed the design aspects of the Onyx
Liquid Embolic System, the different product formulations, the different
viscosities, and the appropriate use in different situations.

In addition, we do a thorough preclinical testing overview to ensure
that physicians are fully informed in the tips and techniques related to
DMSO delivery as well as Onyx delivery. And we share the ‑‑ the summary
safety and effectiveness information from this IDE will be part of that
program.

Again, the safe use of DMSO and the tips and techniques and thorough
review will ensure that physicians are fully informed in patient
selection and Onyx delivery methods.

Importantly, during the didactic session, we spent time ensuring that
physicians understand the correct methods for injecting Onyx and DMSO
displacement and the importance of a slow, controlled injection, not to
exceed .3 milliliters per minute at any time.

Again, throughout the delivery process, we stressed the importance of a
careful, slow, steady consideration of delivery to control pressure, to
control volume of DMSO delivered, as well as to ensure proper polymer
setup characteristics.

We share also with the physicians the injection technique decision tree
to make sure that they thoroughly understand the difference between
injecting glue and injecting the Onyx system. There are different
techniques for forward penetration and also when you reflux the embolic
agent in the catheter.

Also, during the didactic sessions we cover the catheter removal
techniques and reinforce, again, that it is a different technique than
with n‑BCA. During catheter removal with Onyx, you go through a cycle of
gentle traction, followed by review of catheter placement and removal of
slack, and then, again, follow up with a series of gentle traction
rather than the rapid removal that you experience in removing catheters
with n-BCA.

So, again, we reiterate the importance of the difference between the
n-BCA technique.

During the hands-on in vitro bench workshop, physicians get experience
in preparing and handling and injecting the Onyx DMSO as well as the
Onyx solution under fluoroscopy, as well as direct visualization. And
there is the opportunity for interactive discussion with this flow
model.

Also, during the hands-on workshop we intentionally recreate potential
failure modes in embolic agent delivery, including creating restriction
in kinked catheters, in stressing the importance of viewing multiple
images, and super-selected angiography to ensure proper catheter
placement, and that there are no kinks prior to delivery of the embolic
agent.

In addition, we intentionally simulate an overpressurization situation
by allowing the Onyx to vastly exceed the two-minute maximum waiting
time to ensure that physicians get that tactile feedback of actually
experiencing what overpressurization feels like if Onyx is left ‑‑ if
the maximum wait time is exceeded.

Following the hands-on workshop, we go through a case review, ensuring
that physicians are aware of patient selection criteria, how to
determine proper patients for treatment. We review feeding arteries,
vessels embolized, types of Onyx used, and tips and techniques, as well
as the surgical course and clinical outcome.

Following that, we have physicians view cases with an experienced
investigator, and this gives further reinforcement to the importance of
patient ‑‑ proper patient selection. They get to view Onyx preparation,
catheter priming, as well as to observe injections under fluoro and
under varying flow conditions.

And with that, we\'d like to thank the panel again for your time and
attention, and as well as FDA for the opportunity to present our
preclinical, clinical, and training information today.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you. I\'d like to thank MTI for their
presentation.

Does anyone on the panel have any questions for the sponsor? Let me also
mention that panel members will have the opportunity to ask the sponsor
questions later this afternoon. But if you have any now, that\'s fine as
well.

Yes, Dr. Kurt?

DR. KURT: In the two deaths, were the brains examined for the neuropathy
histologically to see what the proximal tissue showed?

MS. WALTERS: I\'m going to answer that. We did not examine the
histopathology of those two patients.

DR. KURT: I would think that would be ‑‑ could be something done in the
future, if future deaths are examined.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, Dr. Becker?

DR. BECKER: Following up on the question of the deaths, they were both
attributed to surgical issues. But since this product is being used to
prepare the AVM for surgery, could they not be related, in that there\'s
a failure of the product to actually make the AVM resectable?

MS. WALTERS: I\'ll introduce Dr. Don Larsen, who was the Chairman of the
Data Safety Monitoring Board, to answer this question.

DR. LARSEN: Thank you. I should disclose that I did purchase, and still
hold, 185 shares of MTI stock for the past five years, and I am
compensated for my time and expenses for this trial and my presence
here.

The two deaths ‑‑ the first patient that Dr. Duckwiler presented, a
large portion of the AVM was embolized in one session. And I spoke with
the investigator at the site directly regarding this case, and obviously
reviewed all of the source documents, including the operative report,
discharge summaries, death summary.

There is no indication from any of what I was able to retrieve that the
embolic agent had any causative effect in the surgical difficulty of
that case. There is absolutely no mention of that fact in the operative
report from the surgeon.

In fact, in the description of that case, it sounds very similar, and
it\'s my conclusion that it\'s due to normal perfusion pressure
breakthrough bleeding. There were a lot of shunts that ‑‑ there\'s a lot
of high flow shunting in the AVM, even at the time of surgery, even
though 72 percent of the AVM volume was embolized in that single
session.

We obviously left the clinical decision to operate and when to operate
and how much to embolize to the clinical sites. But I do not have any
feeling that this had anything to do with the embolic agent.

The second death ‑‑ this patient was embolized seven times over a fairly
long staging process. And there were ‑‑ that patient had a significant
reduction in the AVM, but over a longer period of time, and had some
transient adverse events that resolved unrelated to the post-surgical
event.

Again, I reviewed all of these documents, and the operative report gave
no indication that there was any problem with the embolic agent. It was
a difficult surgery. The AVM was markedly reduced. A post-surgical
angiogram was performed, which demonstrated that there were two major
arteries occluded post-surgically ‑‑ the middle cerebral artery on that
side, at the middle cerebral trifurcation, and the posterior cerebral,
which these major feeders did supply the arteriovenous malformation.

The final post-embolization angiogram, after the seventh embolization,
confirmed that these vessels were open, and the patient demonstrated no
neurologic deficits from ‑‑ in the time interval following the
embolization up until the surgery.

This patient, after the performance of the post-surgical angiogram,
suffered a stroke upon further recovery. So in this case, also, I
didn\'t feel like there was any indication that the agent was
responsible.

DR. BECKER: So the occluded vessels appear to be occluded by thrombus
and not by the Onyx material on the ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: It was definitely not by the Onyx material. Whether they
were surgically occluded at the time of surgery, or whether they
thrombosed following surgery, there wasn\'t a long timeframe in between
the time of surgery.

They went right from surgery to the angiogram. So they might have had
some concern. It wasn\'t documented that there was concern, but I would
assume that there was concern; otherwise, they wouldn\'t have done an
angiogram right after.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: I\'d like you to expand a little bit on that concept. The fact
that the embolic agent may not have caused the deficit or the bleeding
does not exclude the reality that perhaps the agent did not do a
sufficiently good job to occlude the circulation.

The purpose of AVM embolization prior to surgery is to minimize
bleeding. And if you have an incomplete occlusion of the malformation,
then the agent has not done its job. Perhaps it would work out the same
with n-BCA and with any other agent, and I can\'t argue against that.
But to say that the agent did not contribute to the bleeding I think is
disingenuous.

DR. LARSEN: Well, but with the indicators that we have available to us,
there was no indication that the agent was responsible. The angiographic
appearance was identical to a patient that would have been embolized to
72 percent by n-BCA.

So from an angiographic perspective, this AVM was apparently prepared
for surgery. And according to the ‑‑ you know, the operative
physician\'s report, it didn\'t behave any differently.

DR. TSAI: Mr. Chairman, I\'d like to ask a question. Does the Onyx
embolization affect the surgical approach, or any difference compared
with n‑BCA?

DR. LARSEN: There was no indication that the surgical approach was any
different in the Onyx arm.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: I have some questions about the animal studies with the
DMSO.

MS. WALTERS: Okay. We\'ll direct those to Dr. Patterson.

DR. JENSEN: When the studies were performed, was the DMSO injected in a
free flow state or in a wedged position?

DR. PATTERSON: Are you referring to the Chaloupka study or ‑‑

DR. JENSEN: Any studies that have been done.

DR. PATTERSON: Gary?

DR. DUCKWILER: Yes. Two of those studies were done at UCLA. And just
background on the rete morable. It\'s an arterial-to-arterial
connection, so it is not truly representative of an arteriovenous
malformation. So it doesn\'t have the low resistance, high flow that an
arteriovenous malformation would do, and they\'re very small
connections.

So the volume dilution associated with injection of Onyx or DMSO into
those vessels is quite a bit different than for an arteriovenous
malformation.

The original study that Dr. Chaloupka performed, to go into a little bit
of the background, Dr. Robert Taki in Japan first used EVOH as an
embolic agent in patients in Japan. We had actually been interested in
using that agent as a substitute for n‑BCA. When we contacted him to ask
his techniques, he did not infuse that in any controlled rate.

And probably there were no complications associated with that, because
the large volume dilution associated with injecting into an
arteriovenous malformation pedicle. So when Dr. Chaloupka then went to
the laboratory to test that, he injected it as fast as he could.
Clearly, that caused injury into this particular model.

Subsequently, Dr. Murayama, when he investigated it, injected it ‑‑
again, free flow state in both cases at a much slower rate. Then there
was no angiotoxicity. But it does point out that there is a significant
difference between the animal model, which is a lower flow, normal
resistance circuit, versus an arteriovenous malformation high flow, high
diameter, large volume of dilution.

DR. JENSEN: Well, my concern is that in the wedged state you\'re
actually in flow arrest. And isn\'t the damage to the vessel related to
the amount of time the vessel wall is exposed to the material? Even if
it\'s a small amount of material.

So if you are wedged in an AVM, and you prime your catheter, you\'re
getting a small amount of DMSO, but it is exposed to the vessel for a
long period of time because you\'re essentially occluded, would that
particular vessel undergo more damage than that when it\'s injected into
a free flow state? And I bring this up because clinically, Gary, as you
know, some people wedge. And so should there be a difference in the
technique between performing this wedged and not wedged?

DR. PATTERSON: Well, as far as I know, we don\'t have the data of how
often the catheter was wedged or not wedged. The only thing I can state
to that question is that looking at serious adverse events, intracranial
hemorrhage, we did not detect a significant difference. And in terms of
the investigators, it was not controlled, whether they did wedged or
unwedged injections.

DR. JENSEN: Could you do an animal experiment whereby you deliver the
material in a wedged position and histopathologically examine those
vessels compared to those when it\'s in a free flow state? And just
where the vascular changes are ‑‑ you know, I didn\'t review the entire
submission, so I don\'t know the pathology.

Is it all downstream? Is it primarily where the catheter tip was? Was it
in the arteries and the veins? What was the distance of the abnormality
from the initial delivery site? I mean, I just don\'t know those
answers. Can anybody answer those? Is it pretty much a regional
abnormality? Or how far away from the site of injection do you see these
abnormalities?

DR. PATTERSON: Let me just try to rephrase that just a bit and see if
it\'s close to what you\'re talking about. It seems that we\'re talking
about the DMSO in contact with the vessel wall, and then where that DMSO
heads after that, whether it\'s ‑‑ depending on your position with the
catheter, is that true?

DR. JENSEN: Well, my major concern is, number one, how ‑‑ what is the
region of vessels that are affected pathologically from the point where
the DMSO is delivered? Is it all downstream? Is any of it proximal? Is
it only one centimeter away? Do you see abnormalities two or three
centimeters? What\'s the ‑‑ I guess the volume of potential vessels that
could be ‑‑ that could be affected, number one.

And then, number two, how could that volume be changed, or the pathology
be changed, if you\'re in a wedged position and now you\'re exposing the
vessel to basically being bathed in a small amount of DMSO?

DR. DUCKWILER: Okay. Just to address the animal models, both the retes
and the brains were examined. And when you are infusing a large amount
in the rete, it passes directly through into the brain, and you can have
brain distal effects.

But when you\'re injecting it slowly, there are ‑‑ in the carotid artery
there is volume dilution. Actually, as you know from the rete from the
other side, there are no brain effects, no distal effects, and actually
no rete effects.

DR. PATTERSON: Yes, I\'d just like to echo that. We have examined the
entire, you know, brain areas of these animals in some cases. And the
other part of the question, to get to your volume affected, is that the
DMSO goes everywhere. It\'s readily permeable through cell walls. It
goes through the skin. As soon as you put it on your hand, it\'s in your
body and distributes throughout your total body water.

So if we wanted to think about the distribution of it, you have to look
at the whole tissue and the vasculature as the dilution pool for that
DMSO, which is one of the reasons why the small volume, slow injection
works so well for us and is so safe.

DR. JENSEN: All right. Again, though, in the wedged position, what is
that going to do to the vessel wall?

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, just ‑‑ although it doesn\'t really answer that
specific question, the pathologic studies of the resected tissues ‑‑
remember that I believe it\'s 90 percent of the Onyx is DMSO. So when
you occlude a vessel, that vessel that is filled with the Onyx material
has DMSO in contact, and that\'s diffusing out that vessel.

And in the pathologic specimens where that has occurred, which would be
analogous to a wedge situation because you have direct contact,
continuous contact to other material with the wall, there was no
breakdown of the wall. There was no angionecrosis.

Well, there was angionecrosis because the vaso vasorum was eliminated,
but there was no extravasation of the material beyond the confines of
the wall, even though it was in continuous contact with it in the AVM
resected specimens.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Let me ask one followup, Dr. Duckwiler. You did most
of these embolizations at UCLA.

DR. DUCKWILER: That\'s correct.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Did you make it a point to either wedge or not wedge
the catheter in the cases that you did?

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, it\'s ‑‑ the unique thing about the material is
that you can achieve a wedged state starting from an unwedged state, and
that we did perform.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Because the viscosity as it comes out ‑‑

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, because you can ‑‑ it was alluded to in the
training about the ‑‑ what we call the \"plug technique.\" Because you
have such a long working time, and it is non-adhesive, you can have
material surrounding the tip of the microcatheter.

Now, we do not recommend ‑‑ and in the training we\'re very careful not
to recommend ‑‑ to have excessive reflux around the tip of the catheter.
But once you have material around the tip of the catheter, you are
essentially injecting in a wedged state into the distal AVM. So, and
you\'re injecting over a very long period of time.

So to reiterate Dr. Jensen\'s question, you essentially are creating a
wedged state in many of these injections, bathing the vasculature the
entire time, and still in the pathologic specimens there was no
extravasation of the material beyond the wall indicating that even
though there was continuous DMSO contact there wasn\'t breakdown of the
wall and the vessel.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Great. Thank you.

Dr. Massaquoi?

DR. MASSAQUOI: Yes. Just following up on that, in particular about the
pathology, and you sort of mentioned that there\'s no extravasation or
vascular rupture. But in detail, were there frequently significant
differences ‑‑ I guess as you\'re alluding to ‑‑ between normal vascular
internal histology and the potentially toxic effects of DMSO.

And the issue is: what potential impact might those changes, even
non-ruptured changes, have to do with secondary vasospasm later,
particularly in the case of hemorrhage around the vessel, friability
during surgery, and for those ‑‑ that subset of patients that actually
don\'t go to surgery and live for a long time with those treated vessels
intact who may be hypertensive and have other vascular pathological
conditions, what\'s the safety of those DMSO-treated vessels?

DR. DUCKWILER: Okay. If I miss one of the questions, you\'ll remind me,
right?

DR. MASSAQUOI: I\'ll repeat them.

DR. DUCKWILER: All right. So number one, Dr. Harry Vinters did much of
the pathologic analysis at UCLA of both the animals and of the patients,
at least those that were treated at UCLA in the Phase I study.

He also did similar work on looking at the pathology of n-BCA and PVA
embolized specimens at the University of Western Ontario when he was
there. So he has great familiarity with the pathologic markers and
appearance post-embolization specimens.

And the overall conclusion he had was there really is no difference in
the pathologic examination of those AVM specimens, and that in the
animal studies the progress of the pathology is very typical of any
mildly inflammatory reaction not in excess of PVA or n-BCA, and probably
not much less either. So very similar.

In terms of following patients over the long term, we have patients who
are still undergoing treatment or who did not have surgery. Three- and
12-month followup is done on those patients, and I think Dr. Larsen can
speak to the outcomes in those patients, but I do not believe there are
any clinical sequelae in any of those patients who have been followed
with retaining material who haven\'t had either complete resection or
have not had any resection, or who went on to radiosurgery.

And there was a third question.

DR. MASSAQUOI: No. Well, it was just actually ‑‑

DR. DUCKWILER: Oh. I think it was the ease of surgical, and I think Dr.
Pride did address that issue. As far as we know, there are no reports of
excess difficulty in operating and removing this material.

DR. MASSAQUOI: In terms of at surgery, is there any ‑‑ let\'s say you
have local bleeding, and it might predispose to vasospasm, either
locally or remotely, so that there would be thrombus clots created in
adjacent arteries that might have been exposed. Is that a risk? Or might
it be that at the time of surgery that there\'s extra bleeding because
the treated ‑‑ the DMSO exposed vessels are more friable?

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, as a secondary endpoint, we did look at surgical
blood loss, and there was no difference between the two groups, although
we are dealing with a wide range of brain AVMs and entry, and there\'s a
wide range in that. But, again, we have no information that would point
to any greater difficulty at surgery, any increased blood loss at
surgery, or any secondary effects differentiated in the Onyx group from
the n-BCA.

I don\'t know. Perhaps in terms of the clinical followups or the
surgical ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: There have been no serious adverse events in those patients
who did not undergo surgery being followed up in the 3- and 12-month
timeframes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: I\'m sorry. How many were those? How many were there?

DR. LARSEN: Nine total.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Since you\'re back, can I just ask you one ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: Yes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: You had mentioned about in the person who ‑‑ I think
it\'s the second death that had seven embolizations and was actually
neurologically intact prior to the surgery, and then had the thrombosis
in the MCA distribution.

DR. LARSEN: Yes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: I thought in the description of that case there were
transient facial pareses and transient focal deficits during the
embolization procedures that were ‑‑ and it wasn\'t clear whether that
was in the same territory of the eventual stroke. And, if so, or even if
not, what is the mechanism of transient neurological deficits during the
procedure? Is that any different from ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: That patient did have transient visual field deficits. PCA
compromised transiently during the procedure. That\'s not unusual to
occur in either treatment arm, to have transient deficits come and go,
particularly in n-BCA during the course of a multi-staged embolization
process.

These neurologic deficits stabilize, though, and ‑‑

DR. MASSAQUOI: Right. I think facial palsy was specifically mentioned.
It didn\'t mention the side, and I was just wondering how the facial
palsy developed in the middle of ‑‑ whether it was on the same side that
the person eventually stroked, and whether during the embolization there
was essentially a sentinel neurological sign during that.

DR. LARSEN: I\'d have to review the case in detail and answer your
question later today.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: I\'d like to just ask for clarification ‑‑ having familiarity
with the international neuroradiologists and their approach to
management of AVMs, Pedro Lileck, Mark Sentano, and Jacques Moray have
advocated the use of embolization techniques as the sole form of
treatment. Is the intent of the company to use that ‑‑ this particular
embolic technique as an adjuvant, or as a permanent therapeutic
alternative?

MS. WALTERS: Speaking for the company, the stated indication for use is
presurgical embolization of a BAVM.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Sorry, one other question. Given the sensitivity of
potential toxic effects in the blood vessel to the rate of infusion and
the emphasis on this very slow infusion, at any point was any
consideration given to an automatic pump delivery system with a pressure
and flow regulation limit and warning sign on ‑‑ warning mechanism?

DR. DUCKWILER: I would say that the ‑‑ one of the benefits of using the
slow, controlled delivery is control. That just the technique of n‑BCA
embolization, you inject it, you have to inject it fairly rapidly, and
then rapidly pull the microcatheter to avoid adherence.

If there is adherence of the microcatheter, you can have some glue at
the tip of the catheter, and during withdrawal that can come out and
cause an embolus. You are pulling it out fast, or you are pulling it out
fast across curves, and you can actually milk the catheter, squeezing
its diameter, and squeeze further material out.

And so the slow, controlled delivery is one of the advantages of the
material. And, in fact, you can inject ‑‑ inject contrast and observe
what\'s going on. So personally, from a clinical standpoint, I don\'t
view the slow, controlled injection as a concern for the toxicity as
much as I have control over the deposition of the material.

The material comes out into the vessel, into any aqueous mixture, sort
of like ‑‑ have you ever seen lava under water, or even above water, how
it has a crust and then it breaks through the crust and the liquid form
continues to come out?

And that\'s how the material comes out, and that is a very controllable
mechanism. You can have it inject slowly. It goes into one territory.
That becomes blocked. It goes into the next territory or area of the
AVM.

And so often times we are injecting it much, much slower than the stated
rate, but you ‑‑ also, you want that tactile feedback, because if the
entire material skins over, then your pressure will start to rise, and
then you have to stop your injection. And, actually, the pressure
tolerances of the microcatheter are quite high. It becomes very obvious
when you need to stop.

So to not have that tactile feedback I think would be a mistake ‑‑ to
attach it to it.

DR. MASSAQUOI: No. But why not have a pressure sensor that tells you
precisely what the pressure is? Because actually, apparently, the
tolerance on the amount of extra volume that you can push in before you
develop a pressure burst, as it was said, caused one proximal rupture ‑‑
seemed to be pretty small.

And also, the alteration in flow rate, the tolerance that you have, is
‑‑ between toxic and safe also is not extremely great at some point.
I\'m sure if you are, as you are, very good and you can pick up the
subtle differences in the pressure, and so forth, but the question is,
you could conceivably have a pump that just simply does not exceed
tolerances under any circumstances, and eliminate the issue of operator
failure.

I\'m just wondering if that ‑‑ is there a clinical reason why that
couldn\'t be done, or a device couldn\'t be done that way?

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, I think that, yes, theoretically, that the ‑‑ but
the issues ‑‑ I would hate to take the judgment out of the hands of the
individual.

The rupture of the catheter ‑‑ just to address that tissue. Now, if you
do have a rupture of the catheter, there will be no change in pressure,
but there will be a horrendous complication. And the catheter that did
rupture is a FlowRider catheter.

And this is seen with any flow-directed catheter. So the other ones on
the market can do the same thing. And as was stated in the training, you
have to be careful when you advance these catheters there are no kinks,
because a small kink in this catheter can lead to damage to the catheter
wall and rupture.

So it would be devastating to attach a microcatheter with a weakened
wall that could not tolerate that pressure ‑‑ so an immediate
recognition of that, because also when you inject, you are also looking
at the catheter, so you\'re doing contrast injections. You\'re looking
at the movement of the catheter. You\'re making sure the contrast is
actually in the tip.

In the slow, controlled injections, it\'s a very slow rate of passage of
the material through the tip of the catheter.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Yes. So, in fact, you\'re doing a lot of things at once
‑‑

DR. DUCKWILER: Yes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: ‑‑ which is the concern.

DR. DUCKWILER: Yes. And I just don\'t think that the intelligence of the
system can be arranged that would replace the haptic feedback, and the
eye-hand coordination that\'s necessary.

It\'s not dissimilar from any surgical procedure. You know, it\'s ‑‑
there\'s some robotic-assisted surgery, but in no cases is the ‑‑ are
the hands taken out of the system entirely.

DR. TSAI: I have two questions, Dr. Duckwiler. The one question ‑‑ the
first question is: does the injection technique affect the difficulty to
pulling ‑‑ removal of the catheter?

DR. DUCKWILER: No. I think only as it relates to how much reflux you
have around the tip of the catheter. That would be the only difference.
And we are very careful in training to avoid more than about five
millimeters of reflux around the tip of the catheter, because as you get
more and more material, although it is not adhesive it does form
mechanical friction pulling the catheter out.

But with cycling, putting tension on, releasing tension, putting tension
on, you do break that mechanical friction and retrieve the catheter. And
as I said, although it did occur in eight procedures, eight incidents in
seven patients, only one led to clinical event, and in all cases the
catheter was able to be removed, unlike the TrueFil study where in the
‑‑ in that trial, four catheters, they had to be removed surgically.

DR. TSAI: Second question is the UltraFlow catheter, is it any different
from, you know, other microcatheters? I have seen one of your cases the
UltraFlow, not able to reach it, and you changed the catheter to reach
the nidus of AVM. Can you ‑‑

DR. DUCKWILER: Well, I\'d rather have someone else discuss the actual
construction of the catheter. But the primary consideration is whether
the catheter is DMSO-compatible, and that is an issue using different
microcatheters. So the only two catheters available to use with the Onyx
material are the UltraFlow and the Rebar catheter.

But in terms of the specific construction, I\'d rather have somebody
else speak to that.

DR. LARSEN: Dr. Tsai, I just want to just mention I use ‑‑ I don\'t
inject Onyx in my clinical practice. I\'m not part of the trial,
obviously, in that regard. But I do use the UltraFlow pretty routinely
for my n-BCA liquid adhesive embolizations, because it is FDA ‑‑ you
know, it\'s approved for neurovascular use as opposed to the other
microcatheters available.

But this particular ‑‑ I don\'t find that there\'s any significant
difference in accessing the AVMs with that device versus the Spinnaker,
except for much smaller distal arteries. But I\'d prefer to use the
UltraFlow routinely. I mean, I don\'t think there\'s any difference in
terms of injecting Onyx, but I could have somebody else comment on that.

DR. PATTERSON: The UltraFlow catheter and the Rebar catheter, both
supplied for Onyx, being DMSO-compatible they have similar construction.
There\'s a teflon liner, stainless steel wire over that for strength and
support, followed by different barometers of material to give it the
flexibility.

The FlowRider being a flow-directed catheter then has a much more
flexible profile at the tip in terms of its plastic barometer than the
rebar. In bench testing from our models, we haven\'t shown ‑‑ well, we
have found comparable access, you know, to ‑‑ in bench models with the
other competitor products.

I\'ll let Dr. Larsen\'s comments stand from the clinical perspective.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz?

DR. DIAZ: Dr. Duckwiler, a couple of questions. I was intrigued by your
analogy of the lava flow into the various interstices of the AVM. Two
questions come from that. Are any of the hemorrhagic findings that you
had in any way related to venous occlusion, premature venous occlusion
of the AVM that may have caused rupture?

And the second one is: the development of this plug that you describe at
the end of the catheter, and any situation capable of producing early
arterial occlusion of the feeding vessel without really affecting the
nidus itself? Too liquid or too thick is what I\'m asking.

DR. DUCKWILER: Absolutely. I think that in terms of the complications I
would leave that to Dr. Larsen, but to just describe the utility of this
material in terms of the vein.

One of the big advantages is it is non-thrombogenic. As I stated in my
presentation, having glue pass into the vein, you can get pretty
significant venous occlusion, and then subsequent rupture of the AVM.

In cases where I have seen passage into the venous portion of the
malformation from the Onyx material, it layers on the vein. In followup
with those patients, no thrombus occurs on that material. So one of the
safety points is actually that if some goes into the vein, it is not
going to cause a thrombus, or unlikely to cause a thrombus, at least in
the cases I have personally performed.

DR. DIAZ: Can it be large enough to occlude it without being a thrombus
in the middle?

DR. DUCKWILER: Yes. So as it does form a sort of ball, like I said like
lava around the tip, it is possible to have it occlude right at the tip.

But as I said, many users are using that to their advantage, and
allowing the skin to form along the proximal aspect of the developing
Onyx cast. And then, once a firmer skin that\'s in contact with the
blood is developed, then push the Onyx beyond the distal part and into
the AVM.

So this ‑‑ you know, this agent has been approved in Europe for a long
time, and so many users are actually using that to advantage by using
what\'s called the \"plug and push technique\" to skin over proximally
and then push it distally, and having that skin proximally also helps
avoid reflux ‑‑ further reflux.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen?

DR. JENSEN: I don\'t know if you can answer this, Dr. Duckwiler, but is
the company collecting any followup data on the cases in Europe where
patients have had Onyx used for radiosurgery ‑‑ pre-radiosurgery
embolization?

MS. WALTERS: I\'ll answer that on behalf of the company. We are not
sponsoring, nor are we collecting, information on any studies in here.

DR. JENSEN: So you have no long-term safety data, or any long-term data
that shows that patients with material that\'s left in actually
continues to remain occlusive. Since it\'s non-thrombogenic and it\'s
non-adhesive, there\'s a possibility that blood can flow around. It can
change morphologically, or the blood can flow around it, reestablish
flow. I mean, we have no idea whether there\'s any recantilization.

I realize your application is for presurgical, but let\'s be honest.
People are going to be using this material, and then following patients
up with radiosurgery. You have a pool of patients in Europe that you
could potentially go back and look at that information, which is very
important. And I\'m just wondering if you intend to, and it sounds like
you\'re not. And if not, why not?

MS. WALTERS: Well, we participate in, you know, device vigilance
reporting systems. So any adverse effects that we are made aware of we
do report both in our PMA application as well as to the European
regulatory authorities.

DR. JENSEN: But you don\'t actively go out and seek them. I mean, there
were only seven that were reported to you out of, what, 6,000 doses that
have been sold outside of the United States? And I find it hard to
believe that there\'s only seven adverse effects out of 6,000. So
there\'s no collection made by your reps or anything to find out if
there\'s ‑‑

MS. WALTERS: We developed a premarket approval ‑‑ a premarket study that
was done to obtain CE marketing in Europe in 1999, and since then we\'ve
been participating in the post-market vigilance program there. And
we\'ve made FDA aware of any adverse effects of which we have become
aware.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Kurt? Yes, go ahead, please.

DR. KURT: A point of clarification with my original question about the
two deaths in the brains. I didn\'t necessarily mean to imply in my
question, which you more or less reacted to, that there was any
dysfunction of Onyx as a material to block the AVM.

Rather, I was implying my interest in the proximal tissue, the proximal
histology, which has sort of come up in subsequent questions about, you
know, the animal studies have shown that there\'s an angiotoxicity
related to rapid injection, and in the chronic studies more of a
vasculitis.

So what is the situation histologically proximal to, you know, the Onyx
blockage itself? You know, because that also results in the
neurosurgical approach and how easily the Onyx is removed, and the
friability of the tissue around it.

DR. PATTERSON: I can comment on the Mexico City paper ‑‑ the patients
that I presented in the preclinical section, outside the U.S., in those
seven patients. You\'re correct in noting that in the animal studies we
have seen with the large volume, rapid injection, of course, the
angiotoxicity.

After that, we\'ve modified the parameters, of course, per the animal
studies showing no angiotoxicity. I\'m just kind of repeating the
statement. Sorry.

And then, finally, with the human experience, we found in those seven
patients no adverse histopathology in those excised specimens.

DR. KURT: I think it would be helpful to followup in subsequent
patients. It\'s been pointed out to ‑‑ when you\'re in there
neurosurgically to perhaps get small amounts of tissue to see what
really histologically is taking place approximately.

DR. DUCKWILER: Just to, again, go back to the animal studies, the way
they were done in terms of the ‑‑ at least the studies done at UCLA, the
infusion was in the artery, and the artery and the rete were taken in
toto, in terms of the rete and the proximal vessel. Again, with the slow
infusion, there was no pathologic change in the proximal vessel either.

In terms of the human specimens, obviously, it\'s problematic to take
anything proximal to the site of the AVM. The surgeon operates right at
the border of the AVM, so we don\'t have any direct information, other
than perhaps any reports of the surgery that were collected in the study
for any issues related to surgery.

In terms of the angiographic followups, I think probably Dr. Larsen
could state to see if there were any vascular changes associated with
the blood vessels, either proximal or around the AVM.

Don?

DR. LARSEN: I was blinded to the agent when I read the angiogram. So I
‑‑ nothing looked unusual in any of the AVMs in terms of any
neurovascularity that might have occurred in any of the patients in
there.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks very much. I think we\'ll take one more
question from Dr. Haines, and then we\'ll break for lunch.

DR. HAINES: Just a couple of quick clarifications. If I understand it
correctly, we have no human histopathology around the AVM or in the
distal areas of distribution beyond the AVM. Was the goal of
embolization in all cases greater than 50 percent reduction?

DR. LARSEN: You are referring to the goal in the clinical site in ‑‑

DR. HAINES: Yes.

DR. LARSEN: The goal was to prepare the patient with embolization to the
level where the surgeon felt it was appropriate to resect the AVM, which
would be no different than the standard of care.

DR. HAINES: Correct. But that might not always be 50 percent
obliteration, so ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: We left it to the site to determine when it was ‑‑

DR. HAINES: If the site determined that less than 50 percent
embolization was an appropriate goal, was that patient included in the
study?

DR. LARSEN: Correct. Yes.

DR. HAINES: Okay. Was there any systematic attempt to get an assessment
from the surgeons about the effectiveness of the embolization in making
the surgery more effective or easier?

DR. LARSEN: Not that I know. Do you mean in terms of data gathering?

DR. HAINES: We heard anecdotal statements about, was there a systematic
effort to get that feedback from the surgeons?

DR. LARSEN: Not directly from the surgeon.

DR. HAINES: And finally, in the preliminary information we got in the
training session there was mention of an optional animal ‑‑ is that
still in the program, or is that ‑‑ because it wasn\'t mentioned.

MS. WALTERS: Right. That\'s correct. The physicians have the option of
participating in the in vivo animal workshop or the option of observing
cases with an experienced investigator from both. So it\'s included in
your panel packs that you\'ve reviewed.

DR. JENSEN: So they could actually go to a training course and not do
anything hands-on?

MS. WALTERS: The in vitro training course where you inject into a flow
model, you prepare the characteristics, etcetera, is standard for all
physicians.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Thank you.

We\'ll break for lunch and reconvene here about 1:05, please.

(Whereupon, at 12:22 p.m., the proceedings in the foregoing matter went
off the record for a lunch break.)

A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

(1:11 p.m.)

CHAIRPERSON HURST: We\'re going to begin with the FDA presentations on
this PMA, and the first FDA presenter is Dr. Peter Hudson. He\'ll be
followed by Dr. Ann Costello and Ms. Judy Chen.

Dr. Hudson?

DR. HUDSON: Thank you. Good afternoon. I\'m Peter Hudson, and I\'ll be
presenting the first of three reviews by FDA staff on the preclinical,
clinical, and statistical information regarding the Onyx Liquid Embolic
System.

Onyx is provided in two different formulations. The formulations vary in
viscosity. Onyx 18 is a six percent ethyl vinyl alcohol formulation, and
Onyx 34 is an eight percent ethyl vinyl alcohol formulation.

The viscosities are provided for use in different blood flow and AVM
penetration settings. The system is provided one vial of Onyx 18 or 34,
one vial of DMSO, and three DMSO-compatible syringes.

The device is intended for use as a ‑‑ for presurgical embolization of
brain arteriovenous malformations. Although it\'s intended as a
presurgical tool, not all patients end up having their AVM surgically
resected as was witnessed in this case in the study where nine patients
didn\'t go on to have a full, complete surgical resection of their AVM.

The important thing, of course, to point out is that although it\'s
intended as a presurgical tool, the fact is that we have to consider
that the device might be permanently implanted.

Briefly, some of the chemistry of Onyx. Onyx is a solution of ethyl
vinyl alcohol dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide, and micronized tantalum
is added for enhancement for fluoroscopic visualization. Ethyl vinyl
alcohol is formed by combining ethylene gas and vinyl acetate.

The resultant co-polymer of ethyl vinyl acetate is then treated in an
alkalide environment with methanol with hydroxo groups replacing the
acetate groups, although ‑‑ and the resulting ethyl vinyl alcohol
co-polymer.

Although the parent chemical toxicities, they don\'t necessarily predict
final product chemical toxicity, both polyethylene and polyvinyl alcohol
both have medical device histories that indicate relative safety.

Tantalum itself is a relatively chemically inert metal being susceptible
only to hydroforic acid in terms of chemical degradation. Dimethyl
sulfoxide is a polar solvent that ‑‑ whose toxicity has been widely
studied, and whose toxicity is the focus of review in this application.

The sponsor provided biocompatibility data in accordance with
recommendations for medical devices having blood contact. In these
evaluations presented here, the sponsor tested the device as it would be
implanted into the patient ‑‑ an eight percent ethyl vinyl alcohol
solution containing tantalum.

Notably, the sponsor conducted a 360-day implantation study. They also
had a full panel of gentoxicity and mutagenicity evaluations, and
included a carcinogenicity evaluation via the transgenic mouse model.
The device passed all of these evaluations.

Another biocompatibility test that\'s recommended for blood contact in
medical devices is hemocompatibility. Early on the sponsor did this
evaluation, but they prepared the material, first polymerized the ethyl
vinyl alcohol, and then washed it with saline to remove the DMSO,
feeling that it was ‑‑ that DMSO might confuse the findings or
complicate the findings and not truly reflect the biocompatibility of
the polymer itself.

The devices prepared for that, in that way, passed the hemolysis test.
It was found to approximately increase the clotting time by 18 percent,
and also was seen to activate complement.

In general terms regarding DMSO toxicology, the research literature
shows LD50\'s in the range of 2.5 grams to 11 grams per kilogram in
cats, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and rats. DMSO has been noted to be
hemolytic in animal evaluations, especially where intravenous
administration has been conducted. DMSOs caused hemouria and
hemoglobinuria.

In addition, DMSO has been observed to be angiotoxic. Concentrations of
50 percent or lower tend to be better tolerated, but concentrations
greater than 50 percent or the anhydrous form, as provided for this
device, have been shown to be angiotoxic.

The amount that\'s delivered per procedure in this clinical study was
.77 mL of DMSO. This included the .27 mL catheter priming amount, plus a
.5 mL volume of Onyx. That translates into approximately a 12.1
milligram per kilogram amount of DMSO. And if you recall from the
previous slide, that\'s approximately 200-fold lower than the low end of
the LD50 range.

Forty-three and a half percent of the patients in this study received
more than one Onyx embolization procedure. And so it\'s likely that
patients will be seeing more than 12.1 milligrams per kilogram.

In information provided by the sponsor of clinical use outside of the
United States, the average volume of injection was 1.57 mL or about 25
milligrams per kilogram. And the largest single dose seen outside was
8.36 mL amount.

Recognizing that DMSO can cause angiotoxicity, early experiments, as
mentioned by the sponsor, by Chaloupka, looked at the feasibility of
using the embolic agent in the swine model. And they noted with
uncontrolled ‑‑ faster rate of injection that the embolic agent caused
severe vasospasm, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and stroke.

Histologically, there was a depletion of the endothelial cells of the
vessels at the site of injection. Thromboses were observed, transmural
necrosis, and extravasation of the embolic material. The investigators
of that study concluded that the DMSO was probably the causative factor
in causing the angiotoxicity that was observed.

Murayama, then in a followup experiment to that, investigation to that,
looked at the infusion of DMSO under controlled conditions, using a
catheter priming volume of .3 mL and delivering that over a controlled
rate of infusion as well as the volume of Onyx, again, under a
controlled rate. They found no vascular toxicity. They were able to
limit vasospasm and vascular damage.

And this study, in conjunction with another study by Chaloupka that I
don\'t have here, is where the sponsor identified the rate of infusion
that they recommend for the device of .33 mL per minute.

The sponsor conducted a long-term evaluation of the product in the swine
model. They used ‑‑ the embolization procedure used the rate and volumes
as determined in previous studies. They looked at 3-, 6-, and 12-month
followup of histopathology.

They did not note vasospasm in this study. They did note foreign body
response, a robust foreign body response. However, they did not see any
angionecrosis.

The 12-month histologic examination indicated a relative decrease in the
chronic inflammatory response that was first seen in the 3- and 6-month
time points.

Again, the sponsor conducted another study looking at the feasibility of
using the agent in the treatment of aneurysms. The device is intended
for aneurysms. It\'s not directly applicable to the use ‑‑ to this use
in AVMs. However, the histologic response of the material can be
extrapolated from the study and give us more information regarding the
angiotoxic ‑‑ potential angiotoxic effects.

Aneurysms were surgically created on the carotid artery using the vein
graft technique, and then the embolic agent was administered by using a
balloon catheter distal to the aneurysm site to arrest blood flow. The
embolic agent was then delivered to the aneurysm site.

The balloon catheter was deflated. Blood flow was reestablished. And,
again, the catheter was reinflated, and more embolic agent was delivered
resulting in a staged delivery of the embolic agent.

The sponsor looked at 3-, 6-, and 12-month followup with ‑‑ followups
with histopathology, and they noted over the course of time that the
aneurysm neck was gradually healing, that there was new intimal growth
covering the aneurysm neck in continuity with apparent vascular ‑‑ the
vessel. And they noted that the tissue response to the Onyx was
equivalent to the GDC coils that were used as a control for a comparator
for the histologic response.

As the sponsor mentioned, there is some limited human experience
regarding Onyx and its angiobiocompatibility. Histopathologic
examination of seven AVMs embolized with Onyx was evaluated. Six of
those seven had more than one embolization procedure done. The time of
treatment between ‑‑ the time of treatment of embolization to surgical
excision varied from three to 19 months.

There was no evidence of vascular necrosis or rupture and no evidence of
extravasation of the material in the specimens assessed. The sponsor
also collected MRIs, CTs, and X-rays of patients that had undergone
embolization of their AVMs with Onyx or the n-BCA TrueFil liquid embolic
agent.

And they noted that in roughly half of the patients in both cohorts that
there was an image change pre- to post-operatively. When a core reader
assessed the films for device-relatedness, they found that ‑‑ they
concluded that there was ‑‑ that the device did not cause those changes,
that the changes were consistent with either the effects of irradiation
of the AVM, surgical resection, or the natural history of the AVM
itself.

An FDA radiologist reviewed those films and concurred with the
interpretation that the interpretation was consistent with the data
provided.

So, in summary, regarding the DMSO potential vascular toxicity and
concern with repeat injection, we know from studies that DMSO is
angiotoxic, or can be angiotoxic, and that the rate of infusion is
critically important to whether or not it will elicit a vascular
necrosis or toxicity.

Chaloupka, Murayama, and another study by Chaloupka, established that a
slow rate of infusion limited vasospasm and also limited permanent
vascular damage.

Repetition ‑‑ the information we have is very limited. When you look at
the research literature, we know that repeat injection of DMSO on a
daily basis can cause vessel occlusion as well as vessel fibrosis. We
don\'t have repeat information regarding the injection of Onyx in animal
evaluations here.

The volume of DMSO that ‑‑ or Onyx delivered in this study was .77 mL
per procedure. This correlates to approximately 12.1 milligrams per
kilogram, about 200-fold lower than the low end of the LD50 range
reported in the research literature.

The number of procedures patients are going to see is more than ‑‑
approximately half of the patients in this clinical study had more than
one embolization procedure, and so they will be seeing more than that
12.1 milligram per kilogram dose.

The device, as indicated, is a presurgical tool, so the tissue is
intended to be surgically excised. But as seen in this study, not every
patient will go on to surgical resection. The FDA has questions
regarding ‑‑ for the panel regarding repeat injection, as well as
permanent implantation.

The sponsor did additional preclinical evaluations on the polymer with
respect to the effects of irradiation or for the potential for chemical
interaction of DMSO with other embolic agents used in patients. Patients
that don\'t go on to have a surgical resection may have irradiation, and
so we were concerned that the polymer might break down upon irradiation.

Chemical analyses showed that there was no difference in the polymer
before and after, that there were no apparent degradative products ‑‑
byproducts. Also, the chemical analyses looking for an interaction
between DMSO and coils or with cyanoacrylate liquid embolic agents,
again, showed no evidence of degradative byproducts or evidence of a
chemical interaction.

So, in conclusion, the sponsors conducted extensive biocompatibility
assessments of the device. They have been evaluated. They have looked
into the potential angiotoxicity of DMSO and have defined it in the
animal studies that have been presented.

The device has been looked at in animal evaluations out to 12 months,
and the foreign body and chronic inflammatory responses observed against
the material appears to be consistent with other embolic agents that are
currently used in patients.

That concludes my talk. So Dr. Costello will now talk about the clinical
information.

DR. COSTELLO: Good afternoon, members of the panel. I\'m going to be
presenting clinical data collected by Micro Therapeutics, Incorporated
in support of their device, Onyx.

The indication for use which the sponsor is requesting approval for is
that the Onyx Liquid Embolization System is an artificial embolization
device intended for use in the treatment of brain arteriovenous
malformations when embolization is indicated to minimize blood loss to
reduce the size of the brain arteriovenous malformation size prior to
surgery.

The objective of this randomized, multicenter, controlled trial was to
demonstrate that Onyx was no worse than n-BCA in terms of efficacy
within a 20 percent specified clinical tolerance.

The sponsor has already reviewed the inclusion/exclusion criteria for
their study, so I\'m just briefly going over the inclusion criteria that
were specific to the brain arteriovenous malformation. The arteriovenous
malformations could be present in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, or
dura mater.

There was one patient who had an arteriovenous malformation in the brain
stem. The arteriovenous malformation could have a Spetzler-Martin grade
of I, II, III, or IV. However, if the Spetzler-Martin grade was a I or
II, the anticipated benefit of embolization for surgical resection had
to be greater than the risk of the embolization procedure.

One hundred eight patients were randomized in the study ‑‑ 57 to the
n-BCA group and 51 to the Onyx group. There were six protocol
deviations. Six patients had dural fistulae, one in the n-BCA group, and
five in the Onyx group. Therefore, there were a total of 102 patients ‑‑
56 n-BCA and 46 Onyx patients ‑‑ that were available for treatment. The
baseline data, which I will be presenting, is based on this n of 102
patients.

There were two late screen failures in the n-BCA group, 45 of the n-BCA
patients had a complete surgical resection, while 41 of the Onyx
patients had a complete surgical resection. There was partial resection
or radiosurgery in six n-BCA and three Onyx patients.

There is one patient ongoing in the n-BCA group and two patients ongoing
in the Onyx group. There were two patients lost to followup in the n-BCA
group.

The patient demographics show that there was approximately ‑‑ that the
Onyx group had a mean age that was approximately five years older than
that of the n-BCA group. There was an equal distribution between males
and females in both the n-BCA and Onyx group.

The mean body mass index of the Onyx group was statistically
significantly higher than that in the n-BCA group. That is the only
statistically significant difference in terms of the patient
demographics. As you can see, systolic blood pressure and diastolic
blood pressure are similar between the two groups.

In terms of medical history, there were two patients who had coronary
artery disease ‑‑ there were three patients in the Onyx group who had
coronary artery disease, as opposed to only one patient in the n-BCA
group. In terms of hypertension, there were 11 patients in the n-BCA
group, while only eight patients in the Onyx group.

In terms of neuro history, there were 11 patients who had a history of
seizures in the n-BCA group and five in the Onyx group. The only
statistically significant difference in medical history was in the
presence of an aneurysm in which five patients in the n-BCA group had an
aneurysm, and no patients in the Onyx group had an aneurysm.

There were six patients who had an intracranial hemorrhage greater than
one year in the n-BCA group and three in the Onyx group. In terms of
surgical clipping, there were three patients in the n‑BCA who had this
intervention.

The presenting symptoms were evaluated based on the worst presenting
symptom. This is an acute bleed that was greater than ‑‑ less than 30
days, defined as less than 30 days, a remote bleed which was defined as
between 30 days and less than one year, neurological deficits,
neurological symptoms, or no clinical symptoms.

The majority of the patients had some type of neurological deficits,
which would include seizures, hemiparesis, visual disturbance, and
difficulty speaking. Neurological symptoms included headache, migraine,
nausea, vomiting, and nystagmus.

One patient in the n-BCA group had two arteriovenous malformations.
Therefore, the pretreatment assessments of the AVMs was performed on 103
arteriovenous malformations in 102 patients. Again, there were 57 AVMs
in 56 patients in the n-BCA group, and 46 AVMs in 46 patients in the
Onyx group.

In terms of the location of the AVM, whether the patient ‑‑ whether the
AVM was in an eloquent area of the brain, or the type of venous
drainage, the two groups were similar. In terms of venous drainage, the
majority of the AVMs had superficial drainage.

In terms of Spetzler-Martin grade, a slightly higher percentage of n-BCA
patients had a grade I Spetzler-Martin grade arteriovenous malformation.
However, the number of patients who had Spetzler-Martin grades of III or
IV were similar between the two groups.

In terms of AVM size, the Onyx group had a higher mean AVM size of 26.3
compared to the n-BCA group. However, the difference was not
statistically significantly different.

The baseline neurological status was evaluated using the Glasgow coma
score, the Barthel index, and the NIH stroke scale. The Onyx group had a
slightly higher percentage of patients with worse scores at baseline on
these neurological scales.

On the NIH stroke scale, 40 percent of the Onyx patients and only about
25 percent of the n-BCA patients had an NIH stroke scale greater than
zero on entry into the study. However, again, the differences are not
statistically significantly different.

There are two Onyx formulations ‑‑ Onyx 18 and 34. The sponsor has
provided specific instructions on when to use each formulation. However,
the clinical data has not been analyzed to support these instructions.

The instructions which have been provided to you in the labeling are
that Onyx 34 is recommended when feeding pedicle injections will be
conducted close to the nidus at flow rates up to 200 mL\'s per minute
and in three millimeters or smaller diameter vessels.

Onyx 18 will travel more distally and penetrate deeper into the nidus
due to its lower viscosity. Therefore, it is recommended when feeding
pedicle injections will be conducted close to the nidus, and the flow
rate is less than 50 mL\'s per minute. The sponsor recommends a coil
placement prior to Onyx injection should be considered for feeding
pedicles with fistulae having flow rates in excess of 200 mL\'s per
minute and vessel diameters of three millimeters or greater.

In terms of the Onyx usage details, there were a total of 202 catheters
used. And as you can see, the UltraFlow was used in the majority of the
cases.

To answer your question from this morning, Dr. Jensen, 144 of the
procedures were done using an unwedged position, 36 were done using the
wedged position, and data was missing on the other three cases.

Onyx 18 was used alone in 76 percent of the cases, Onyx 34 was used
alone in 13 percent of the cases, and a combination of the two was used
in 11 percent of the cases.

In 10 procedures, no agent was delivered. The mean volume of injection
was .5 mL\'s, and the mean duration injection of the Onyx was 5.44
minutes. DMSO usage ‑‑ the mean volume of DMSO injected was .27 mL\'s,
and the mean DMSO injection time was 90.9 seconds. As presented by Dr.
Hudson this morning, this meant that a total average of .77 mL\'s of
DMSO was used.

Since two of the n-BCA patients were late screen failures, the following
data is based on 54 n‑BCA patients. The n-BCA has a variety of
formulations. Seventy-one percent of the n-BCA procedures were done
within the guidelines of a 3:1 to 1:2 oil to n-BCA ratio. In 23 percent
of the cases, a higher concentration of oil was used, and in six percent
of the cases, a higher concentration of n-BCA was used.

No agent was delivered in eight procedures, and the mean volume of n-BCA
delivered was .38 mL\'s.

The clinical protocol allowed for adjunctive procedures to be performed.
As you can ‑‑ excuse me, I got ahead of myself.

Because of the two late screen failures, the remainder of the slides
will be based on an n of 100 patients ‑‑ 54 in the n-BCA group and 46 in
the Onyx group. There were a total of 173 procedures, 91 in the n-BCA
and 82 in the Onyx group.

The majority of the patients could be treated with one embolization
procedure. There were two patients in the n-BCA group who had five
embolizations, and there was one patient in the Onyx group who had seven
embolizations. The average number of procedures per patient was 1.7 for
the n-BCA group and 1.8 for the Onyx group.

The clinical protocol allowed for adjunctive procedures to be performed.
As you can see, in 25.3 percent of the n-BCA cases coils were used, and
in only eight cases, which was 9.8 percent for the patients, coils were
used in the Onyx group. This is a statistically significant difference.

The reason given for the use of coils was primarily the presence of a
high flow fistula, which was present in 20 of the n-BCA group patients
and four of the Onyx group patients.

The primary endpoint for the study was a 50 percent or greater
angiographic reduction in AVM size by core laboratory. And this was a
blinded analysis. Secondary endpoints included surgical blood loss and
surgical resection time.

The percentage of patients with greater than or 50 percent exclusion of
AVM showed that Onyx was equivalent to n-BCA in terms of effectiveness.
In other words, they met their primary endpoint for this study.

In terms of the mean blood loss, there was a higher mean blood loss in
the Onyx group as compared to the n-BCA group. However, this was not
statistically significantly different. In patients who had more than one
procedure, the average amount of blood loss was calculated based on all
of the procedures that were performed.

In terms of surgical resection time, the time is very similar between
n-BCA and Onyx. Again, for patients who had more than one surgical
procedure, an average surgical resection time was calculated based on
each of the procedures performed.

The percent of patients who declined or remained unchanged on the NIH
stroke scale was similar in both groups post-embolization and
post-surgery. Similarly, the percent of patients who remained unchanged
or declined on the Barthel score was similar for the two groups,
post-embolization and post-surgery.

Of the patients who had a normal Glasgow coma scale score of 15, there
was a lower percentage of patients in the Onyx group post-embolization
and post-surgery who had a Glasgow outcome score of zero.

In terms of patients who presented with some deficit, i.e. a Glasgow
coma score of less than 15, there were a total of six patients, three in
the n-BCA group and three in the Onyx group. And as you can see, one
patient in each group had a Glasgow outcome score post-embolization and
post-surgery of one, and two patients had a Glasgow outcome score of
three post-embolization and post-surgery for both groups.

This slide is a rating of ‑‑ the physicians\' rating of device
performance. In the n‑BCA group, it\'s based on 85 embolizations in 54
patients, and in Onyx it\'s based on 75 embolizations in the 46
patients. In terms of controllability and penetration, the physicians
reported that Onyx was ‑‑ rated Onyx as good or excellent in a larger
percentage of the procedures than n-BCA.

However, in terms of visualization, the physicians rated n-BCA as good
or excellent in more patients than in the Onyx group.

The safety profile of the device which I will be presenting is different
from that which the sponsor presented this morning. In the original PMA,
the primary adverse events were listed. Adverse events, which were felt
to be a result of the primary event, were not listed.

FDA informed the sponsor that all adverse events needed to be counted.
Therefore, the sponsor provided revised tables which were included in
the second mailing. And these are the tables which you did receive in
the second mailing.

As you can see, in terms of headache, nausea, and vomiting, the cranial
complications were similar between both the Onyx and the n-BCA group. In
terms of worsening neurostatus, again, it was similar between the Onyx
and the n-BCA groups.

During the last couple of days, the sponsor has provided some
information stating that there were only eight delivery catheter removal
difficulties. However, this data has not been reviewed by FDA.

Therefore, we report as in your ‑‑ the tables that were provided to you
that there were 10 incidences of delivery catheter removal in the Onyx
group and none in the n-BCA group. The number of intracranial
hemorrhages were similar between the two groups.

However, in terms of poor penetration/visualization, there were five
events in the Onyx group compared to none in the n-BCA group. There were
four patients who had hydrocephalus in the Onyx group compared to only
one in the n-BCA group.

The sponsor also showed that there was only one patient who had
vasospasm in the Onyx group and three in the n-BCA group. And that two
patients in the Onyx group had an infection, while no patients in the
n-BCA group had infections.

In the last couple of days, FDA has become aware that there has been
another Onyx death. The patient was a 70-year-old male who had their AVM
recepted, so had completed the study. So, therefore, there were three
deaths. However, again, the data that has been provided to you is that
there were two deaths. This is what has been reviewed in detail by the
FDA.

There were two deaths in the Onyx group and none in the n-BCA group.
Similarly, there were two cases of stroke in the Onyx group, and none in
the n-BCA group. There were two incidences of catheter shaft rupture in
the Onyx group and none in the n-BCA group.

There were three instances of vessel dissection perforation in the n-BCA
group, and only one in the Onyx group. Similarly, for embolization of
unintended vessels, this occurred in three patients in the n-BCA group
and only one in the Onyx group.

In terms of prolonged polymerization time, this occurred in three
patients in the n-BCA group and none in the Onyx group.

In terms of the two deaths, one patient was a 52-year-old woman with a
right neck bruit which was found on routine physical examination. Workup
revealed a frontal lobe arteriovenous malformation with a
Spetzler-Martin grade of II. She was asymptomatic and neurologically
intact.

She underwent embolization with multiple injections of Onyx, which
resulted in a 72 percent reduction of her AVM. Except for headache and
mild access femoral discomfort, the procedure was uncomplicated, and she
had no new neurological findings.

The patient underwent elective surgical resection of the AVM. During the
surgical procedure there was extensive blood loss with an estimated
blood loss of five to six liters, with transient hypertension.

She has an initially uncomplicated post-operative course, including a
post-op angiogram that documented total resection of the AVM. She was
extubated, awake, and responsive. That evening she experienced a severe
headache, became less responsive, and required reintubation.

At the time of this operation, a hematoma in the previous resection bed
was evacuated, and bleeding sites were coagulated. Following this
reoperation, she was maintained in a barbiturate coma. She demonstrated
no improvement in her neurological function throughout the period, and
eventually with family ‑‑ after discussion with the family, care was
withdrawn and the patient expired.

The other patient was a 50-year-old man who had a subarachnoid
hemorrhage in 1989, apparently related to an aneurysm that had undergone
surgical clipping. He presented with hemiparesis and a stroke in 2001,
at which time his arteriovenous malformation was diagnosed.

The arteriovenous malformation was a large, high-flow, predominantly
dural-based, Spetzler-Martin grade III. He had a history of seizures and
headaches. On enrollment into the study, he had a moderately severe
hemianopia, an NIH stroke score of one, and a Barthel of 100.

He was randomized to the Onyx group. There were no technical
difficulties, but followup examination demonstrated slight worsening of
the NIH stroke scale due to progression of his hemianopia to complete,
as well as mild right lower extremity weakness. This latter finding had
resolved by the next evaluation.

He subsequently underwent six additional staged embolization procedures.
The next-to-the-last embolization procedure was done with embospheres,
and the seventh procedure was done with a combination of Onyx and
embospheres.

At the completion of the series of embolizations, the AVM had a 97
percent reduction. Approximately nine days after his last embolization,
he underwent elective surgery. Post-op angiography documented complete
resection of the AVM, but there was marked attenuation of the left
middle cerebral artery and its branches.

A followup CT demonstrated a large MCA distribution infarction, and the
patient had a dense right hemiparesis. He remained intubated and
receiving supportive care until the patient requested that he be
extubated, and he expired.

The sponsor responded to our request for additional information on the
adverse events by providing us with a description of adverse events on
certain of the ‑‑ on the patients in which they had found adverse
events. FDA did an analysis of each of the patients and found that there
were some inconsistencies between what we found in the patient
descriptions versus what was found ‑‑ which was reported by the sponsor.

In terms of headache, nausea, and vomiting, it was found to be present
in 80 percent of the patients by FDA analysis, and in 72 percent of
n‑BCA, which is quite similar. In terms of worsening neurostatus, again,
although the numbers are larger, 78 percent for FDA and 72 percent ‑‑
excuse me, 78 percent for Onyx and 72 percent for n-BCA ‑‑ the numbers
are similar and are similar as well for the presence of persistent and
transient neurological deficits.

In terms of intracranial hemorrhage, the numbers are the same except for
one additional patient who had an intracranial hemorrhage in the Onyx
group. In terms of seizures, FDA noted that there were two patients in
both groups who were reported to have had seizures.

In addition, in terms of vasospasm, the sponsor had reported only one
event, whereas in their patient descriptions there were three vasospasm
events mentioned.

This is a summary of the frequency of non-cranial complications. There
were 17 reports of patient discomfort in the Onyx group, and 11 in the
n‑BCA group. In addition, in terms of severe bleeding, low hematocrit
requiring a transfusion, there were two events in the n-BCA group and
none in the Onyx group.

In the remainder of the non-cranial adverse events, the numbers are
similar.

So, in summary, the sponsor has shown that Onyx and n-BCA are equivalent
in attaining a greater than or equal to 50 percent reduction in their
arteriovenous malformations. Again, based on the safety data which was
provided to you in the second mailing, there were two patients who died
and two had strokes in the Onyx group. More patients in the Onyx group
had hydrocephalus and reported discomfort and had access site bleeding.

There were 10 reports of delivery catheter removal difficulty in the
Onyx group, and there were more reports of poor
penetration/visualization in the Onyx group.

This concludes my presentation, and Ms. Chen will now give you a
statistical review of the data.

MS. CHEN: Hello. This afternoon I\'m here to provide a statistical
review on the clinical data. Since the safety aspect has already been
discussed in detail by both Dr. Hudson and Dr. Costello, the statistical
comments will focus on effectiveness.

The study is a randomized parallel group trial of 17 centers and 108
patients. All patients were diagnosed with brain arteriovenous
malformations. And the primary effectiveness endpoint ‑‑ proportion of
patients who are rated as successes. The secondary effective endpoints
are surgery blood loss and the surgical resection time.

And the study objective is to demonstrate that the proportion of
patients who are successes in Onyx group is not inferior to that in the
n-BCA control group. Inferior here is defined as the success proportion
in control group is higher than that in the experimental Onyx group by
at least 20 percent.

Since there will be three different analysis populations, I would like
to clarify it here. The first one is FDA\'s ITT population, which
includes 108 all randomized patients.

And the second one is the sponsor\'s ITT, which includes only 93
patients, since two late screening failures, six dural fistulae, and
four films not analyzable, and three ongoing were all excluded from the
above randomized patients.

And there is also sponsor\'s conservative ITT population, which includes
96 patients. That is because they are adding two ongoing in the Onyx
group counted as failures and one in the control group counted as a
success to the above ITT population.

Here is ITT population ‑‑ 93 ITT patients distributed among the 17
centers. As you can see, the number of patient percentage is very small.

Okay. Based on this ITT population, the sponsor is summing the total
number of patients, and the numbers of successes over all 17 centers,
and they\'re coming up with a success proportion of ‑‑ let\'s see,
proportional successes are 84 percent in the control group and 98 in the
Onyx group.

The treatment difference is 14 percent. This is statistically
significant with two-sided 95 confidence interval from 2.3 to 24.3
percent.

The sponsor also provided conservative ITT analysis, which included 96
patients. So also by summing total numbers of patients and number of
successes over 17 centers, and assuming patients who are ongoing as
failures in the Onyx group and successes in the control group, the
proportion of successes are now 84.6 percent in the control group and
93.2 percent in the Onyx group.

The treatment difference here is 8.6 percent with two-sided 95 percent
confidence interval, minus 3.8 percent to 20.9 percent, which is not
statistically significant anymore, but which the lower limit is still
higher than the prespecified minus 20 percent difference.

Here is our comments on sponsor\'s ITT analyses. First, original
randomization is not preserved by excluding patients from the ‑‑ all
randomized patients. And also, just by summing the numbers over the 17
centers, the center or stratification is completely ignored.

Yes, we provided alternative analysis based on all 108 randomized
patients and distributed among 17 centers. The first were analyzed at ‑‑
based on odds ratio. Odds ratio is the ratio of odds of being a success
versus being a failure in Onyx group to the odds in the control n-BCA
group. An odds ratio of one indicates the treatment effects are equal.

With odds ratio, we can have the homogeneity of odds ratio across
centers. And based on the data that I have just shown, it is not
statistically rejected, although the power here I have to say is very
low.

Accepting that the homogeneity of odds ratio across centers, a common
odds ratio estimate is 1.55, with one-side 95 percent lower limit 0.68.
This is not statistically significant.

We can also come up with an estimate on difference. But in order to do
that, we have to assume homogeneity across investigators in treatment
difference. The Mantel-Haenszel treatment difference is 6.6 percent,
with one-sided 95 lower confidence limit minus 7.2 percent. This is not
statistically significant, but it is still higher than the prespecified
tolerable difference of minus 20 percent.

This is some data that you have already seen on secondary endpoints for
blood loss and for resection time. As you can see, Onyx has higher mean
value and median value in blood loss. But since the data is very
variable with large variances, it is not statistically significant, both
in blood loss and in resection time.

Now comes to the conclusion. First, comparing Onyx to control n-BCA, the
odds ratio of success is 1.55, with one-sided 95 percent confidence
limit .68. If we are assuming homogeneity of treatment difference across
centers, Onyx is not inferior to control n-BCA in proportion of patients
rated as successes.

But with large variability, no statistical conclusion can be reached on
blood loss or resection time.

Now, this is the end of FDA\'s presentation. The next slide will display
our questions to the panel members.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you, Ms. Chen.

Does anyone on the panel have questions for either Drs. Hudson,
Costello, or Ms. Chen? Yes?

DR. MASSAQUOI: On the study and the assessment of physician satisfaction
with the two procedures, and there was seemingly a significant
difference in terms of visualization, was there actually any details
given as to what caused poor visualization in the Onyx group relative to
the other group?

DR. COSTELLO: I believe that they think it might have something to do
with the tantalum concentration. But basically, there were also five
reports, adverse events, poor penetration/visualization, but there were
no additional details given.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Any other questions? Yes, Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: A further question of Dr. Costello. Based upon the possible
hemolysis in the animal model, was anything done to look for hemolysis
in the human?

DR. COSTELLO: No.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: We\'ll now go ahead and begin the panel discussion.
Three voting members of the panel will open this part of the meeting
with their remarks, and we\'re going to start with Dr. Thomas Kurt, who
will give his remarks on the preclinical information available.

DR. KURT: Thank you for allowing me to comment today, and I appreciate
being here. I want my comments to be construed as constructive as
possible, and as even-handed, and I\'m not going to necessarily refer to
a competitor\'s product as glue. I\'ll refer to it as n-BCA, and your
product as Onyx.

What I\'d first like to start out ‑‑ and I have a handout, which I
assume some of the principal people in the audience have as well, I\'ll
review things in the safety consideration of general toxicity and
neurotoxicity with specific ingredients in mind.

And considering the DMSO, or dimethyl sulfoxide, which has a relatively
good safety profile in the dosages that you are using, I have to take
sort of a bad case scenario of a different but similar molecule called
carbon disulfide, which has been used in the rayon industry and has been
associated with neurotoxicity, both of a peripheral axonal type and also
of a central type that results in psychosis.

And I would like to be sort of in the long term reassured that under no
circumstances in storing of the mixture ‑‑ because under your storage
concerns you have listing of storage up to 55 degrees Centigrade as
being ‑‑ Celsius as being satisfactory ‑‑ that a reaction does not take
place in which carbon disulfide is generated.

Next, concerning the ethylene vinyl alcohol co-polymer, of course, in
the past because I have had experience dealing with the plastic surgery
committee in which we have reviewed polymers, and dealing with
situations in the past as a regional medical officer who reviewed
certain implanted type of devices.

I also dealt with the situation in the Dallas area with the National
Institute of Occupational Safety and Health where we dealt with a
hexacarbon which resulted in a neurotoxic substance which was used in a
polymer bathtub plan. So I\'m familiar with the concepts of looking at
polymers for potential neurotoxicity or sensitivity.

In that regard, I would like to point out that this polymer does not
consist of isocyanate monomers which make urethane polymers where there
is sensitization. So we do not have that problem.

We are not consisting here in this polymer with anhydride monomers which
make epoxy polymers, which are also sensitizers, both skin and
respiratory-wise. We are not looking at the sensitizer
methylmethacrylate which sometimes results in sensitivity or allergic
reactions as does actually the cyanoacrylic products at times cause
sensitization, particularly with rhinitis.

And we\'re not necessarily dealing with an organocyanide, such as
you\'re dealing with acrylonitriles or a peripheral neurotoxin such as
acrylamide.

Dealing with the tantalum, of course, I\'m not familiar with that being
used as a radio-opaque product, and I have nothing either of a positive
or negative nature concerning that toxicity.

In dose, I would like to comment that the dosage concerns that you gave
on injection of the substance into the bladder for treating cystitis ‑‑
although with my aging concerns as my bladder is getting older, I still
consider my brain to be more important than my bladder.

And because of that, the dosage concerns in the brain might not be on a
dose-equivalent basis from the standpoint of toxicity. And while I\'m
sympathetic in that regard, I would not necessarily want to apply
injections in the bladder in studies in the human with toxicity with
those in the microvasculature of the brain.

In factors of administration, of course, the dosage concern can be in
the method of administration. And I have reviewed that, and I really
don\'t see necessarily any problems.

I did consider necessarily and was not aware of what you used for
premedication of the patients considering that seizures were reported in
comparative studies of the patient groups, and I do not understand
whether you premedicated with the benzodiazepine, with hydantoin,
etcetera, which could necessarily mask the relative amount of seizures
in patient groups, and if there was any difference in which
anticonvulsant was used.

Also, as a concern, I think potentially with toxicity, if there is any
drift of this substance. In the base of the brain, we have the
pituitary, and we also have the basal ganglia. And, of course, those are
of much greater concern from the standpoint of small organs, and I would
be concerned if there had ever been any drift relatively to those
anatomic locations.

Separately, I reviewed toxicity from the standpoint of carcinogenicity.
I\'m familiar with the National Toxicology Program\'s 10th report to
Congress, which is available on the website which I have listed. And
this is the interagency agency through which FDA and all other federal
agencies subscribe to for carcinogenicity, and the substances involved
get a clean bill of health in that regard.

As alluded to earlier, I have some considerations about storage
stability, because the temperature range listed in your labeling goes
from minus 20 degrees to 55 degrees C, and that upper range in my
calculation would actually be 130 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a
relatively high room temperature of tolerance.

I would be concerned about if there are any reactants taking place
within the substances of mixture under that concern, or any breakdown
products of any of the individuals because one of them could possibly
serve as a kind of synergistic factor with the other.

Also, I would be concerned over time because DMSO literally permeates
anything, that if there would be any attrition or loss of the relative
DMSO in the container over time to the outer air, and, therefore, lesser
in the percent of the DMSO within the mixture product itself.

It was also of interest whether the catheters are reused and
resterilized. When catheters are resterilized, they are frequently
resterilized using ethylene oxide as a gas sterilant. And, of course,
ethylene oxide is very similar from the standpoint of using another
ethylene which could possibly be leached out.

And you would want to be sure that there is no leaching out of the
ethylene oxide if gas sterilization is used of repeat used catheters
and/or there would be some kind of consideration of testing them for
that.

Earlier I had expressed my concern about potential angiotoxicity or
vasculitis. And because of that, I think it would be wise to follow up.
For instance, you had a third patient that was recently deceased, and I
would look at that as an opportunity to study the histology of that
person\'s brain if it\'s still retrievable, rather than a hot potato
where you\'re just discarding them.

And that and any other opportunities to study the histology of, say,
brain biopsy tissue of the proximal area might give you a better idea of
how ‑‑ providing the best safety profile for your product.

In addition, I think because of the question of vasculitis, it would be
interesting to test for immunoglobulin E or IGE, which is often a
reactant in sensitive people.

In regards to my question of emolysis earlier to Dr. Cassidy ‑‑
Costello, excuse me ‑‑ the ‑‑ I think it would be wise to check for
plasma hemoglobin and haptoglobin to be sure in the human model that the
hemolysis is not taking place post-injection.

And I notice ‑‑ because I like to check not just in what the ‑‑ is
furnished to the FDA, but in checking your website on the net, and on
the website it states under cyanoacrylates in Onyx that Onyx lacks
adhesive properties. It minimizes the risk of Onyx adhering to the
delivery catheter while the physician embolizes vasculature in a slow
and controlled manner.

I think to tell the complete story you need to tell in the labeling that
Onyx actually results in catheters being stuck at a higher rate, even
though it\'s not adhesive. And some kind of truth in labeling ought to
occur in a comparison when referring to adhesion.

Thank you for listening to me, and any comments can follow.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you, Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: And I consider these ‑‑ while I try to make tough comments,
tough comments often lead to a better product and a safer marketed
product.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks, Dr. Kurt.

Does any member of the panel have questions for Dr. Kurt?

Dr. Jensen?

DR. JENSEN: Sorry. I don\'t have anything written. Didn\'t know I was
supposed to. I was going to read it to you from my computer.

I was asked to look at your investigation based upon the clinical study
strengths and weaknesses, and also to comment upon the physician
training.

In terms of your study strengths, I think it\'s very strong that she
prepared this in conjunction with the FDA and had FDA input all along,
which is excellent. The patients were randomized. The data was collected
prospectively, and the core lab was blinded.

You compared your device to a similar blocking agent. That\'s already
approved and in use. Now, it\'s not similar chemically, but it\'s
similar in its use.

The patient populations were comparable. The data was collected at
experienced centers, and you collected clinical data using multiple
neurological scales to evaluate patients instead of just one scale.

In terms of study weaknesses, some of the things that came out at me
were the total number of patients analyzed. You had a loss of patients.
It was a small number to begin with, and, believe me, I understand that
it\'s hard to collect lots of patients for diseases that aren\'t all
that terribly prevalent.

But there was also loss of patients through things such as late screen
failures, protocol violations, and patients that were lost to followup,
which only diminished the number of patients that could actually be
analyzed.

In addition, there were numerous sites with differential enrollment.
And, therefore, again I understand how you have to do this across
multiple sites, but this does result in interoperator variation, not
only in the embolization procedure itself but also in surgery.

I also noted that there was incomplete data collection on neurologic
examinations. There were varying numbers of patients analyzed among the
different tests and between the groups, and this is for all of the
different Glasgow coma scale scores, the Barthel index, and the NIH
score, which made it a little bit difficult for me to actually sort of
keep going back and forth between the different groups to try to figure
out who was missing from what group and why.

It looks like some of the information such as the Barthel index was
administered after patients had immediately had an embolization, and,
therefore, they were unable to perform some aspects of the test. But in
that case, perhaps a different test should have been used instead of one
that would automatically result in not being able to obtain data.

Let\'s see. As it\'s been noted before in conversations earlier, there
is a lack of pathological data outside of the resected area, so we are
uncertain as to what effects the agent has upon so-called normal parts
of the brain that have not been embolized.

There has also been a lack of long-term followup, and I realize, again,
that you were looking at patients who were going to go to surgical
resection. But as became clear in your study, not everybody goes on to
resection. Often, based upon the embolization, the plan changes, and
that\'s just a reality of treating these lesions, and I think it\'s
something you\'re going to have to address.

Along the same vein, that means there\'s a lack of long-term safety
data. There are no other similar devices, i.e. those that use DMSO,
available for comparison currently in use in humans. And, therefore, you
have the dubious honor of being the first, and sometimes you are held to
the higher standard.

There is also an incomplete explanation for some of the technical
issues. I realize that there were five cases that were ‑‑ had either
poor visualization or penetration, but there was not a very good
explanation for why that happened. And since visualization is key in
using embolic agents, there needs to be a better explanation.

Same also for the inability to withdraw catheters. Obviously, that could
be based upon patient anatomy, upon catheter construction, catheter use,
the embolic agent itself, and I think there needs to be a better
explanation for why this happens and how to prevent it from happening.

There has also been some issue ‑‑ for me there is an issue of what Onyx
might do in a patient who was previously treated with alcohol. You had
looked at cases for patients who had been treated with coils, and with
n-BCA, but some patients are treated with alcohol.

Alcohol denatures cells and vessel linings, too. And then, to add a
substance with DMSO on top of it could result in an untoward effect, and
alcohol was not looked at in your bench testing or in your ‑‑ I\'m
sorry, your animal testing.

In terms of the training issues that I foresee coming up, one is going
to be the training experience. Who is going to be allowed to use your
product? And I realize you can\'t have restriction of trade, but I think
that\'s something you need to think about very seriously, because
clearly like n-BCA there could be some very bad complications when
placed in the hands of people who are either poorly trained or not
experienced.

And so that begs the question: should previous liquid agent experience
be required before you go to train somebody?

In terms of the training experience, some of my comments have been
answered by what you had presented earlier. Obviously, it must include a
hand-on experience for all trainees, either in the animal model or your
flow model. But I recommend that you do ‑‑ whatever model that the
trainee uses, that it be done under fluoroscopy.

Clearly, one of the issues here is the extremely slow injection that is
required, and I think people need to realize it\'s going to take maybe
close to a minute before you even start seeing the material under
fluoroscopy. And I think that is better experienced using fluoroscopy
instead of just looking at the material as it comes out the catheter.

I also believe there should be no grandfathering. You know, there\'s a
lot of older embolizers out there that have used a lot of n-BCA. But
just because you use n-BCA doesn\'t mean you can use Onyx, and I think
it\'s very important that people don\'t get a pass just because of who
they are.

I think it\'s very good that you\'re going to do intentional
complications. I know you learn a lot more in the lab when you have
foul-ups than you do when everything goes nice and smoothly. So I think
that\'s important.

I think you need to be more specific about the timing of repeat
embolizations. One thing I haven\'t really gotten clear here is, what is
the recommendation of when you can repeat an embolization in a patient?
With n-BCA, I usually just go ahead and treat patients every other day.
That didn\'t really seem to be the case in the case histories here.

It seemed like people were going more like two weeks before they would
treat them again. I think that\'s something that needs to be firmly
assessed and addressed, and people know you don\'t repeat the
embolization until day whatever, based upon the DMSO exposure.

I also think during your training that the trainees should have to use
both of the Onyx preparations. Again, you talk about flow rates in terms
of 200 cm\'s per second, or, you know, 50 cm\'s per second ‑‑ I mean,
minute. In terms of flow rates, I\'m not quite sure how that equates to
an angiographic picture, so I think it\'s important for people to
understand what you consider the appropriate flow state to be to use one
type of material as opposed to the other.

And I think another very important point is proctoring. I think a
hands-on training session is great, but there\'s nothing like having
somebody who is experienced standing next to you while you\'re doing
your first one or two cases. And I think proctoring needs to be
incorporated into your training sessions, in the total and complete
package.

That\'s it.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks, Dr. Jensen.

Does any panel member have a question for Dr. Jensen?

Dr Ellenberg?

DR. ELLENBERG: Thank you. I\'ll be talking from some notes that the
sponsor should have. Yes? Just make it much easier to go through. The
panel does have them.

The first page basically outlines what has been presented before, and
I\'ll go through it very quickly, since everyone has seen this.

Basically, the design was a simple randomization with no stratification
for any baseline characteristics related to outcome. For followup, there
is an NIH stroke and Barthel index, but it appears to be post-surgery
only, and there doesn\'t appear to be any long-term followup included in
the materials that the panel was provided.

The primary efficacy endpoint was a 50 percent reduction in AVM size
following presurgical embolization. The secondary efficacy endpoints are
blood loss index and surgical resection time. The safety endpoints are
serious adverse experiences and non-serious adverse experiences. And the
analysis is to be non-inferiority analysis. It\'s going to be intent to
treat, and also per protocol. This is what the panel received.

The study was powered, I am assuming, based on the primary analysis
endpoint of a 50 percent success rate, and powered to detect the ‑‑ or
reject the no hypothesis of inferiority. And that\'s where we got our
sample size ‑‑ not powered to address the other issues of safety.

The rest of the first page goes through what a non-inferiority analysis
implies. And I think that\'s been covered several times today, so I
won\'t go through that again.

So let me, then, go directly to what my concerns are. And I found this
whole approach extremely interesting, but I do have some questions that
I\'d like to address to the panel and the sponsor.

The first question relates to the rationale for the choice of a binary
efficacy endpoint. In reviewing some of the literature, and specifically
the comparison of n-BCA versus PVA, the AJNR 2002 paper, the
presentation there showed a 79.4 percent in the n-BCA group and an 86.9
percent reduction in AVM size ‑‑ the actual amount of reduction. It
wasn\'t a success. Did you pass the 50 percent point?

So I\'d be very interested in understanding why a 50 percent reduction
was considered as a binary endpoint and as the primary outcome for this
particular study.

As I\'ll allude to later on, my main purpose in asking this question is
whether or not that bar was high enough. Whether or not, in dealing with
a non-inferiority study, if you choose a bar such as achieving a 50
percent reduction, you might be skewing the study so to speak in favor
of non-inferiority being much easier to show.

So that\'s what I have in the back of my mind, but I don\'t have any
data to point to that being an issue. I just want to understand why this
was chosen as your endpoint.

In terms of having availability, a quantitative assessment ‑‑ as the
first paper I just quoted did ‑‑ on page 97 of the 146-page panel
submission, you did show for 60 percent of the subjects the actual
reduction in AVM size after the embolism procedure. And it\'s not clear
to me why 40 percent of the data did not have this data available, which
would allow a reanalysis doing this without a binary endpoint.

The next point, which was reinforced today ‑‑ I\'ve forgotten the name
of the speaker from the sponsor side. I\'m sorry. But two points were
made during the presentations ‑‑ one, that the goal in terms of
achieving a 50 percent endpoint was not, in the mind of the clinician,
actually using the procedure.

The goal in the mind of the clinician, the surgeon doing the procedure,
was to prep the patient, so that they could go through with the surgery.
Then, the data analysis said, \"Okay, was the AVM reduced 50 percent?\"

An additional comment that was made in one of these slides in the
sponsor\'s package was that a size of 2.5 centimeters was sort of where
you had to be very grossly in order to proceed with surgery. I recognize
that\'s a very crude statement to make, but my question coming out of
these two points is basically, should we be looking instead of a
reduction in AVM ‑‑ looking to some absolute level of AVM size, since
this is a presurgery indication? So that ‑‑ those two points were
leading to that fairly simple question, which may not be that simple to
answer.

In terms of sort of the same idea, it seems to me that AVM size and
location, looking at other references cited by the sponsor, and other
covariates, should be considered in analyses that are presented here.
The analysis that the panel has received essentially doesn\'t look at
anything including, as the FDA statistician has mentioned, differences
in centers.

So that where presented in a simplistic way, the analysis of the
question of whether or not the goals were reached without accounting for
any potential imbalances in the randomization, or, even if there
weren\'t major imbalances, adjusting for subtle differences that might
have been present in the data in terms of these important covariates
that are predictors of outcome.

The univariate analysis which is shown on page 96, which indicates that
AVM size ‑‑ that baseline is not a predictor of outcome, is not
convincing to throw out this question that I just raised, in the sense
that we are not aware of how that analysis was done, whether this was a
continuous question ‑‑ excuse me, whether the variable itself was
continuous.

So I would ‑‑ essentially, the question is, why aren\'t we adjusting for
covariates as secondary analyses?

I understand that I\'m guessing that what was submitted to FDA was a
protocol that said, \"We\'re going to do the analysis this way,\" and
that\'s what you did. And I understand that.

But in terms of our understanding of the analysis, and making the very
important statement that Onyx is non-inferior to n‑BCA, it seems to me
that it\'s critically important that we understand the answer to that
question in the context of making sure that all potential confounding
covariates be considered in the analysis.

It seems to me along the same line ‑‑ and, again, I assume that the
analyses that were presented to us were the analyses as outlined in the
protocol. I don\'t have the protocol, so I just have to assume that. It
seems to me that reduction in AVM size is not only a surrogate for the
question of whether or not, have we prepared the patient for surgery,
it\'s also a surrogate for whether or not the ultimate outcome for the
patient is better or worse using one approach or the other.

And it\'s not clear to me exactly how much data you might have collected
at this point, but a longer term followup of final outcomes for these
patients ‑‑ for example, the stroke score a year out ‑‑ would be
extremely beneficial in terms of whether or not one procedure should be
preferred over the other.

The secondary efficacy endpoints ‑‑ the FDA statistician has already
noted this. But for both the blood loss and the time of surgery, because
those events were not taken into account, I\'m assuming, in powering the
study, those events because of their extremely high variability end up
having very little power to detect a difference.

A quick run for the endpoint of estimated blood loss indicated that the
power was in the range of 10 percent to detect the difference that you
observed, which seemed to me to be clinically important, but I can\'t
speak to that. So in terms of judging the efficacy, we unfortunately
have very little power to do that, because of the huge variability in
these outcomes.

And I think I would just stand by the FDA statistician\'s issues
regarding the safety comparisons. I think enough has been said about
that, so I\'ll stop there.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks very much, Dr. Ellenberg.

We\'re going to move on now to the general discussion portion of the
panel\'s deliberations. And what I\'d like to do first is just give
everyone an opportunity on the panel to make comments, and then we\'ll
focus on the FDA questions, which I\'ll ask Dr. Hudson to summarize in
just a few minutes.

Let\'s just begin on my left and go around. And any or all of the panel
members, go ahead and make comments or raise issues, before we get to
those FDA questions, please.

MR. BALO: I\'d just like to make a few comments from an industry
perspective. I think one of the things you\'re seeing today, there\'s a
lot of questions that are being brought up about the study, the way the
study was written, and the endpoints that were chosen.

I think one of the things from an industry perspective, there\'s a lot
of work done by the sponsor working with the FDA to come up with a
protocol that they both agree to ‑‑ will come up with the satisfactory
results to say that this particular device will have some benefit
relative to the risk.

And I think one of the things that the panel should consider from an
industry perspective is industry is always trying to work with the FDA
to come up with the best possible protocol to demonstrate the
effectiveness of their particular device.

Maybe though as we go around today and we have some questions from the
statistician, and we have some clinical questions about the toxicology,
I think these are all questions that I think the sponsor can answer and
probably will answer before the day is over with. And I\'d just like to
keep the panel\'s mind open on this particular viewpoint.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks very much.

MS. WELLS: Hi. In looking at the consumer\'s perspective, of course,
I\'m looking at the safety issues and listening to Dr. Jensen\'s
comments about training. I was very interested in her comments and
suggestions on that.

Also, coming from the viewpoint of being a nursing contact and knowing
about the issues dealing with microcatheters and the possibility there
may be a switch and confusion, I would emphasize that this would be
something to look at is to make sure that the training includes a great
deal of emphasis on the proper microcatheters that should be used with
the DMSO.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: I would like to reiterate the chief points that I raised in my
toxicology discussion, that questions concerning further evaluation of
vasculitis or angiotoxicity in the human model should be pursued,
particularly from the standpoint of studying brain tissue after deaths
have occurred, and proximal tissue at the time of surgical resection.

That further questions should be asked about whether or not hemolysis
occurs in the human, and appropriate clinical tests can be done in a
subset of small patients, such as 10 people approximately, which would
be statistically probably about the smallest number that you\'d want to
do, and that some questions should be pursued for the stability of the
storage of a product that might be stored as high as 55 degrees C, which
is even hotter than Death Valley.

I\'m not sure where you\'re going to be storing it under those
conditions, but perhaps you should lower the temperature of the storage
conditions, take into consideration the DMSOs permeates capsules ‑‑ I
mean, caps, rubber caps, and can evaporate, and that reactants might
take place with long-term storage under hotter temperatures, and that
there needs to be some consideration of the labeling and concern that
actually your competitors\' catheters are sticking, even though they are
an adhesive product, sticking the catheters at a lower rate than yours
are.

So taking that into consideration, and I think that most cogent points
of Dr. Jensen concerning the training of an actual hands-on experience
with your mentor watching you, and Dr. Ettington\'s concern about the
longer-term followup, the longer-term followup and more of a staged
consideration of a higher threshold rather than the 50 percent flow rate
or embolization rate compared to, say, the literature which might be
more at 75 to 80 percent. All of those things I think are important
factors.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks, Dr. Kurt.

Let me just mention also that panel members can ask questions of the
sponsor, if we have any questions.

Dr. Tsai?

DR. TSAI: I have a question about the design of the study. The
embolization ‑‑ the purpose of the presurgical or pre-radiosurgery
embolization, some of the issue is the big lesion in the brain stem or
mid-brain area. From this study, it seems to me all the cases are from
the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, only exception one case is the brain
stem.

Is that by design, or is it by coincidence? That\'s my question.

And also, talking about vessel spasm. Although the presentation
mentioned only one at Onyx, and several in the n-BCA, but when I
reviewed the data, there are several cases where they have difficulty
pulling a catheter and it contribute to the vascular spasm. Is this
vascular spasm different from the reported vascular spasm?

And I think the endpoint for the treatment of AV malformation, surgeon
tried to be ‑‑ prevented future bleeding. And I\'d like to know, the
radiosurgery ‑‑ is there any difference with sponsor Onyx from the
n-BCA?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Would the sponsor like to say anything now? Keep in
mind you do have an opportunity to respond later.

But you asked a number of questions, Dr. Tsai. Do you want to just sort
of focus them ‑‑ three questions, was it?

DR. TSAI: Right.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. DUCKWILER: Dr. Tsai, on the first question of the study design ‑‑
and, actually, it goes back to the 50 percent endpoint ‑‑ in the initial
discussions for the trial and the study design, actually one of the
early proposals for a study design was actually goal of treatment,
intent-to-treat design.

As you had mentioned, with deep lesions or 50 percent, oftentimes in a
presurgical embolization the goal is not necessarily reduction in
overall size, but reduction of those components which make surgery most
difficult. But it was felt in discussions that it was more desirable to
have a metric to measure the effectiveness of the ability to access the
site of embolization, to deliver the material in an accurate location,
and to avoid serious adverse events.

And so it was decided that that metric is best measured by volume
reduction, because it gives you a value whereby you can assess your
access, your delivery system. You can assess your delivery of the
embolic material, and, of course, the SAEs follow.

So although it is not always the true purpose of the clinician to have a
specified percent reduction, and, in fact, sometimes a small reduction
is very effective pre-embolization, it does provide a measure for what
we are actually testing in this hypothesis is that, is this device able
to do the same job as the current device, which is n-BCA?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Other questions? What other ones did you have, Dr.
Tsai?

DR. TSAI: It was about spasm. The second question is spasm.

DR. DUCKWILER: You know, about the adverse events and spasm, I would
prefer if Dr. Larsen perhaps or a data coordinator could describe what
was defined as spasm associated with the injection of the material
versus spasm of the ‑‑

DR. TSAI: Catheter.

DR. DUCKWILER: ‑‑ safe-guided catheter, yes.

DR. LARSEN: Dr. Tsai, could you repeat the question specifically, so I
can answer it accurately for you.

DR. TSAI: Your presentation mentioned the Onyx produced one case of
spasm. But in the data, in the material I got, several cases had
difficulty with the catheter, and it contributed to the vascular spasm.
There is some kind of discrepancy in that, so I\'d like to know, in that
presentation the one case of spasm is different from the
catheter-induced spasm or ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: Yes, that\'s correct. They are different. In some
situations, a spasm, as you know, is caused by the catheter and the
access to the vessel. And I think in that one case it associated spasm
with the Onyx. But the spasm is not always associated, as you know, with
the embolic agent. And I think that\'s where there\'s a discrepancy in
the data.

DR. TSAI: But they said difficulty pulling the catheter. Is that because
the Onyx induces spasm, or the catheter induces spasm?

DR. LARSEN: I don\'t think we can tell. I think ‑‑ there\'s no
indication that the spasm is what\'s holding the catheter versus the
Onyx. I don\'t think we can tell the difference.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is that it, Dr. Tsai?

DR. TSAI: My third question is the radiosurgery to the Onyx and n-BCA.
Is there any difference? I know you have animal ‑‑ you have an animal
stud that doesn\'t affect that. But any difference ‑‑

MS. WALTERS: Right. We\'ll just discuss the followup data that we have
available on the three Onyx patients who went on for long-term followup
rather than just going for a complete surgical revision.

The first patient, the one-year followup is due this coming November.
The second patient, one-year followup was complete and presented in the
PMA. And the third patient has also completed their one-year followup.

DR. DUCKWILER: But I don\'t think we can answer your specific question
about the outcomes of radiosurgery associated with n-BCA versus
radiosurgery associated with the Onyx. It\'s an interesting scientific
question, but I don\'t think that that\'s ‑‑ neither do we have enough n
to do that. There\'s very few patients who ended up having radiosurgery
in either group. The study was not really designed to look at
radiosurgery in association with Onyx delivery.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you.

Dr. Haines.

DR. HAINES: To follow on Mr. Balo\'s comment, I think that the design of
an efficacy study in this disease, which is ‑‑ in which each individual
case has a lot of variation in the individual character, and in which
there\'s a lot of art involved in both kinds of treatment, both surgical
and embolization treatment, is a situation where we can and should allow
a fair amount of latitude on the efficacy side.

But I think the safety issues are really paramount, and we need to pay a
good deal of attention to that, as has come out in the discussion
already.

And, unfortunately, the statistical analysis, and so on, in that area is
not quite as robust as it is on the efficacy side. So it may require a
little more discussion.

And along those lines, would it be appropriate to ask if there\'s any
more detail available on the third patient who has died?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Sure. I think if the sponsor has information, then
we\'re more than happy to hear that.

DR. LARSEN: This patient was a 72-year-old woman who harbored a
Spetzler-Martin grade IV AVM in her right parietal lobe. She presented
with left upper extremity numbness, tingling, and weakness. And she was
embolized three times with a relatively ‑‑ with Onyx with a relatively
short course with approximately two days in between embolization ‑‑ yes,
two days in between embolizations, but three sessions in which after the
first session she did develop a homonomous hemianopsia, which did
improve slightly.

But there was some persistent deficit, and then she did go to surgery.
Let\'s see, how many days ‑‑ excuse me for having to look this up. She
went to surgery two days after her third embolization, and they got a
complete resection clinically, and two days later suffered a large
hematoma in the operative bed.

This resulted in worsening of her neurologic status, with subsequent
left hemiparesis, but she was subsequently discharged to a nursing
facility. Three months later, however, she suffered a rehemorrhage at
the operative site, and she was transferred back to the center. A CT
scan was performed, but no ‑‑ she was felt to be in such bad shape that
they did not pursue any more intervention on her, and she died in the
hospital.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Thanks.

Dr. Becker?

DR. BECKER: I\'d like to just echo Dr. Haines\' comments. And I realize
that taking care of patients with AVMs is a tricky business, and it\'s
hard to compare patient to patient.

There are a number of safety issues, however, that have come up, and
many of these have already been brought forward ‑‑ and it\'s the
long-term outcome. What is the potential neurotoxicity and angiotoxicity
of the drug?

But in regards to the short-term safety, I also have a few questions.
The question about center effect with regards to efficacy has been
brought up. I wonder if anybody has looked at the complications with
regard to center. There have been a number of technical or
device-related complications related to Onyx administration.

I wonder if anybody has looked at that to see if they have clustered in
certain centers or they have been equally spread out, which would bring
up issues about the importance of training physicians doing this.

And then, finally, there was I think a few more cases of hydrocephalus
in patients treated with Onyx than patients treated with n-BCA. And if
there\'s any extravasation of the compound into the subarachnoid space,
one could consider how that would cause non-communicating hydrocephalus
‑‑ I\'m sorry, communicating hydrocephalus.

So I was wondering if the hydrocephalus has been typed. I mean, was this
communicating or non-communicating hydrocephalus? Was it felt due to the
initial hemorrhage or for ‑‑ the hydrocephalus, did it occur for some
other reason?

MS. WALTERS: With respect to the safety analysis that was done here, we
also did perform a logistic regression model which we can discuss just
momentarily that was in some of the materials that we presented late in
the game to FDA. So we can have Dr. Chiacchierini discuss these. And
with the panel\'s patience, I would like to show some slides with regard
to that.

DR. CHIACCHIERINI: Yes. I\'m Dr. Richard Chiacchierini. I\'m a former
FDA employee. I retired nine years ago. I was the head of statistics at
the time for the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. I have no
financial interest in MTI, except for my fee for service basis.

We undertook a multivariate statistical analysis of the serious adverse
events. We used a model that was derived from the method of Posner and
Lemenshau which allows you to do univariate regressions and allows you
to enter into the final model ‑‑ competition for the final model only
those variables that passed some level of significance.

If you don\'t do that, it\'s easy to overspecify the model, because you
have too many variables. The rule of thumb is you should not allow any
more variables to enter the model than 10 percent of the total sample
size, so that would limit us to 10 variables.

When we did that ‑‑ are you going to ‑‑ are you close? There it is,
okay. When we did that, these are the items that remained in the final
model with their P values and their odds ratios. The volume of the
maximum feeder is the injected amount into the maximum ‑‑ the largest
vessel feeding the AVM.

Obviously, blood loss during surgery everyone knows about, and systolic
blood pressure, and the number of surgeries ‑‑ all of those turned out
to be highly statistically significant.

Treatment group was not highly statistically significant, and the P
value was .27.

Other things considered that were allowed to enter the model, that were
dropped out of the model at previous iterations, because their P value
did not drop below .05, are the Spetzler-Martin grade where we divided
it up into I-II versus III-IV, the pretreatment AVM size, which entered
the model as a continuous variable, the number of feeders embolized, the
total time of surgery for AVM removal, the total amount of DMSO
injected, which includes the Onyx injection, and the DMSO injected per
unit of patient weight. None of those things remained in the model as a
significant risk factor for a serious adverse event in the study.

DR. BECKER: Did you actually include the center in this model as well?

DR. CHIACCHIERINI: We didn\'t include the center, because there were 17
centers, a lot of whom had ‑‑ a lot of which had ‑‑ there were seven or
eight centers that had less than five patients. It was pretty difficult
to do that, to provide an adequate breakdown of the center.

These studies are very ‑‑ as you said, very difficult to do to get a
patient accrual. When you do that, the number of centers that have
sufficient patients to allow you to make that discrimination is too
small.

DR. BECKER: And just kind of a followup on that ‑‑ and this is probably
more of anecdotal information from the study ‑‑ but I think there were
seven or eight cases where there was difficulty in removing the
catheter. Is that something that tended to happen frequently to the same
investigator or center, or did it happen once, you know, in your lesson,
and it didn\'t happen again?

DR. CHIACCHIERINI: I\'d have to defer to someone else.

DR. LARSEN: Dr. Becker, I\'m sorry I didn\'t have your answer right away
here. In looking at the site-specific severe adverse events, we have ‑‑
we had three sites that enrolled a moderate relative number of patients
that did have a higher incidence of Onyx-related adverse events
supporting the learning curve issue, to answer your question.

Then, regarding the hydrocephalus, all of these cases appear to be
communicating hydrocephalus from a hemorrhage. In the Onyx group, there
were four of those. One of them was due to a hemorrhage that was induced
by the treatment, not from the Onyx but from the catheterization due to
a rupture. So there was ‑‑ it was due to hemorrhage but not due to the
Onyx blocking anything.

So they\'re all due to hemorrhage and all obstructive hydrocephalus.

I should mention that the other death patient that had the transient
cranial nerve deficit ‑‑ it was a seventh nerve deficit that she had had
prior to treatment that recurred after the second embolization and then
resolved to follow.

DR. MASSAQUOI: A peripheral.

DR. LARSEN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Massaquoi, any comments, questions?

DR. MASSAQUOI: Okay. First, I just want to say, because I have a number
of comments, is that I appreciate the concept behind this device. It
seems very exciting to have low adhesiveness and controllability, and a
lot of this seems extremely favorable.

I would say, though ‑‑ and I also say that, before talking more about
some of these complications, that I can imagine that it\'s extremely
hard for all the people who are involved when there\'s any type of a
death or very serious adverse event, and it must be very terrible.

But I think that that\'s absolutely critical, that situations in which a
neurologically intact 50-year-old person has a bruit listened to and
ends up dead because of procedures, even though it, you know, could well
be just the luck of the draw and could very well be just that. I mean,
this is a dangerous business.

I think that one is obligated to do an extremely detailed, careful
retrospective analysis on any possible systematic feature that could
have contributed to it, because particularly the two things already that
strike me about the two deaths, including the last one that we just
heard, is that they were both reoperate ‑‑ they were both operated on
two days after the last embolization.

The question is: is there sensitivity in these blood vessels or any
other complication, angiotoxicity, that predisposes to late hemorrhagic
complications when you go to surgery briefly following the embolization?
So there\'s this question of: what\'s the appropriate interval between
embolizations? And then there\'s the question of, how soon should you go
to surgery?

And, in general, my concern is that it might be possible that there are
certain identifiable subgroups for which this procedure is not the best
for, but that they are very good for everyone else. And it does not seem
that there has been quite enough analysis and stratification and
retrospective analysis to try to determine whether some of these effects
are present.

So I, first of all, thank you for clearing up about the second death and
the peripheral seventh, which seems to be unrelated to that.

Related to this is the issue that blood loss was shown to be a set ‑‑
was chosen as a secondary endpoint as opposed to primary when in terms
of relation to serious adverse effects it seems that the overall size of
the AVM in a number of feeders is not so critically related to adverse
effects, and blood loss is.

The question is whether blood loss is actually a more critical primary
endpoint, and, of course, I defer to the neurosurgeons, and so forth, on
that regard. But I\'m a little concerned about the order of the primary
endpoint.

And, finally, I did want to mention that, as I alluded to in the first
session, if there is ‑‑ if there are any simple doable device
modifications that can significantly enhance the safety of the device,
it seems that one is also obligated to look very hard for those.

So stratifying the population, and looking for fixes for preventing
these very serious adverse outcomes, would be the recommendation here.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz?

DR. DIAZ: I\'m having a little difficulty trying to put all of this
information together and come up with a sensible comment. I was somewhat
stimulated by the statement of the statistician of the FDA ‑‑ and I\'m
sorry, I do not remember her name ‑‑ who indicated that the procedure\'s
ultimate effect was evaluated on its success. And she highlighted the
word \"success.\"

Success I think, for the purposes of the presentation, was defined as
the ability of embolics to have comparable and at least equal, if not
better, efficacy than n-BCA. I believe that\'s what the analysis was
based on and viewed from the perspective of that point of view.

If I look at it from a neurosurgical perspective on what success means
to me, from the radioendovascular purpose success is obliteration of the
malformation without complications. From the neurosurgical perspective,
it is the resection of the lesion with minimal blood loss and no
complications. From the patient\'s perspective, it is the removal of the
lesion with no complications. And from the company\'s perspective, it is
the approval of the product.

Not all of these are compatible even though the ultimate goal is to
provide safety and efficacy in what we are trying to bring to market.

I am a little disturbed with the measures that were used in the study,
because from my perspective what I need to be convinced of is that
efficacy is there for the ‑‑ not only the obliteration of the lesion but
for the successful resection of that lesion with minimal blood loss and
no damage, or minimal damage to the patient\'s brain.

And from the safety perspective, I need to know that there is no damage
to the blood vessels internally that is going to create a problem for me
at surgery that I can prove or discuss with my patient that the
procedure is going to have minimal neurological side effects in
preparation for surgical resection, and that that is going to give us
the overall best outcome.

I\'m a little disturbed as well by the comment of using size diminution
as the measurable parameter. Seventy-five percent reduction or
50 percent reduction of a lesion is achieved in a variety of ways, which
may or may not help the surgeon, and may or may not make the critical
outcome different.

If I reduce the blood volume size of a lesion by occluding the
superficial vessels but leaving the main feeding vessel at the bottom, I
reduce it even as high as 90 percent, and my patient will bleed to death
because I can\'t get to that bleeder.

So reduction in volume by itself is not a good measure from a surgeon\'s
perspective. It\'s just the efficacy of that reduction being useful to
me.

The size of the feeders is critical to be able to provide catheter flow
or access to those vessels. And, again, location of these vessels may be
a problem.

It\'s a rather lengthy comment, but those are concerns I have when
analyzing the data.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks, Dr. Diaz.

Dr. Jensen?

DR. JENSEN: I\'ve already had a lot of opportunity to make comments, so
I\'ll be brief. One of the things that has concerned me is the fact that
in the hands of extremely competent endovascular therapists there have
been eight episodes of difficulty withdrawing the catheter.

And we have been looking and sort of focusing on the Onyx material
itself, but the entire system also includes a microcatheter, too, and so
the question becomes, are there issues with the microcatheter that
we\'re perhaps not focusing on?

So one question I have is: what is ‑‑ and I don\'t need to know the
structural or trade secret difference ‑‑ but what is the difference
between a Spinnaker and an UltraFlow that makes one DMSO compatible and
not the other? Is it the hub, or is it the actual material of the
catheter itself?

DR. DUCKWILER: It\'s the material of the catheter.

DR. JENSEN: Okay. So there\'s no other catheter besides an MTI product
that could be used to compare withdrawal performance between the
UltraFlow and in another catheter, is there? Has anybody ever injected
Onyx through a non-MTI catheter, non-DMSO compatible catheter?

DR. DUCKWILER: In some of the very early experience we had with it, we
did use catheters manufactured by Cortis, Prowler catheters. And, in
fact, the catheters themselves actually do dissolve in the presence of
DMSO. So they are not compatible.

We did not do specific withdrawal tests with a variety of catheters.
That was not done. But to address the issue of withdrawal of the
catheter, for the members of the panel who may not be familiar,
typically with glue injection you have to do a very quick withdrawal,
because it will be glued in place.

And some of the difficulty I think that was described in the study is
when you compare it to withdrawing a catheter in the presence of n-BCA.

In the training, we go over this quite extensively, that you apply
traction. It\'s really more of a mechanical issue. You have material
around the tip of the catheter. You apply traction and you wait and
cycle the withdrawal until the mechanical friction is reduced, and then
it comes free.

So in the injection it\'s low, in withdrawal it\'s low, and in my
personal experience I feel it\'s more of a training issue in dealing
with the withdrawal. It\'s not that it\'s impossible to withdraw. In all
eight circumstances in this series, the catheter could be withdrawn.

That was not the case in the TrueFil study. Four catheters were glued in
place and had to be removed surgically. So there is benefit. There can
be mechanical friction. It can be overcome, and the catheters can be
withdrawn. But it does require, as you correctly stated, an extensive
training program to understand the differences between the use.

DR. JENSEN: Prior to ‑‑ when you were having difficulty removing the
catheters, did people do any angiography through the guiding catheter at
that time to see if there was friction all along the course of the
vessel? Or is it ‑‑ the vessel essentially normal, just not coming out?

DR. DUCKWILER: In the cases that I am personally familiar with, we did
do angiography while we were withdrawing the catheter, and there was no
evidence of vasospasm along the course of the catheter when you apply
gentle traction.

If you apply too much traction, then the traction itself will cause
vasospasm. But there was not, obviously, vasospasm up to the level of
the Onyx cast. So there was no ‑‑ no abnormality of the vessel diameter
up to the level of the cast.

And, of course, you can\'t see it because there\'s no contrast
penetration into the cast. But no, we did not see, at least in the cases
I was involved in, did not see vasospasm of the vessels induced by any
of the agents, just induced by withdrawal, slow withdrawal.

DR. JENSEN: And I\'m aware of a case outside of the U.S. where the
catheter and Onyx masks were removed because the catheter was stuck and
it could not be removed. Was that specimen given to the company for
observation? Everybody is shaking their head no.

DR. DUCKWILER: Doesn\'t seem like it.

DR. JENSEN: Okay. Thanks.

DR. LARSEN: I did have the opportunity to speak to three of the five
physicians who had catheters that were difficult to remove. And they all
comment that if they just keep a gentle tug it eventually comes out. And
I think some of what I ‑‑ when I spoke to them, they say it\'s a
different technique than what we\'re used to with glue. It\'s completely
different. I just wasn\'t able to ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So, in other words, all of these catheters did come
out.

DR. LARSEN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Without any sort of adverse effect upon the patient.

DR. LARSEN: One adverse event.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. LARSEN: Hemorrhage.

DR. JENSEN: I\'m sorry. It was hemorrhage?

DR. LARSEN: Hemorrhage.

DR. JENSEN: So it came out, but it came out because it ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Do you think that was a training issue as well?

DR. LARSEN: Absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So, in other words, maybe a little bit slower, steady
pressure might have gotten it out, like all the rest?

DR. LARSEN: Absolutely. Right, right. There was ‑‑ that particular case,
what had happened was the physician couldn\'t get it out, took the
patient to the CT scan, because he was worried that there was a
hemorrhage.

And on the CT scan he had seen that the tip of the catheter was now
moved back, and so he went back ‑‑ took the patient back to fluoro, and
sure enough it had moved back on itself, just from the traction that was
initially applied, and he pulled it out.

DR. JENSEN: In bringing up CT scans, given the fact that there is so
much tantalum, or there\'s tantalum in the material, is there a lot of
beam-hardening artifact on the CT?

DR. LARSEN: It looks very similar to n‑BCA, yes. We also ‑‑ getting back
to the catheter, though, we discourage a lot of reflux down around the
catheter with Onyx, for obvious reasons.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So just you feel that the friction around the
catheter tip is probably a significant component of holding it there, at
least until you ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: It seems that way.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: It\'s steady pressure, all right.

DR. LARSEN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So training really sounds like it\'s going to be a
very big component of getting this into safe use.

DR. LARSEN: I think so. Perhaps even among those power users that use a
lot of glue ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes.

DR. LARSEN: ‑‑ it might be a different mind-set.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, it sounds like there are certainly some
differences here. But it sounds like there is a pretty ‑‑ going through
the training program, it sounds like a very reasonable program. And I
think mentoring was brought up before, which would be another thing I
think that would be very important to emphasize about that.

Many of these things are sort of long-term data collection things. And
just to bring up a point to the panel that post-market surveillance is
certainly an option to collect some of that data as well, because these
are very difficult studies ‑‑ I think we all realize ‑‑ to design when
you\'re talking about 70-year-old people with Spetzler IV AVMs who
don\'t do well. That\'s a difficult situation for anybody to be in.

Objective measurement of many of these variables I know is very
difficult as well, but it\'s hard to just ask the surgeon, how was it?
Did we help you? And get an objective measure out of that.

But anyhow, let\'s move on. And Dr. Ellenberg I think ‑‑ do you have any
more comments?

DR. ELLENBERG: Only to indicate that I think Dr. Diaz has put the
surgical perspective very nicely into my comments about outcome.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. We\'re going to move on I think, unless anyone
else has some general comments, to the questions that the FDA has
specifically about the PMA. And I\'m going to ask Dr. Hudson to
summarize those comments. I think he has some slides, and then we\'ll go
around and get a sense of what everyone on the panel feels about the
answers to these questions to give them to Dr. Witten.

DR. HUDSON: Okay. The first question to the panel regards the
preclinical animal evaluations. Preclinical animal evaluations included
in this PMA have shown that the rate of infusion of DMSO can cause
vasospasm and vascular wall damage. Patients undergoing staged
embolization procedures for cerebral AVMs will be exposed repeatedly to
DMSO prior to resection.

Do you believe that the data in the PMA adequately support the safety of
repeated exposure to DMSO? If not, please provide suggestions on the
additional preclinical studies that you believe are needed to
demonstrate the safety of the repeated exposure to DMSO.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Let\'s start with Dr. Kurt. Do you have any comments
about that, Dr. Kurt, that specific point to the FDA?

DR. KURT: I think only in the context of the points that I\'ve raised
before.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. KURT: Nothing additional.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Dr. Tsai?

DR. TSAI: I have a question about ‑‑ you have a case 6012, and also the
patient A011. These two patients it seems to me have a second hemorrhage
after the first operation. Is this related to the DMSO to cause vascular
problem or anything like that?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines?

DR. HAINES: I don\'t think that anything has arisen to raise serious
concern about the safety of repeated administration. I\'m not convinced
that there are additional preclinical studies that would help. On the
other hand, we\'ve got so little information about the effect of ‑‑ this
is essentially, from this point of view, a DMSO delivery system to the
brain.

We\'ve got so little information about that in humans that the ability
to capture some long-term data from treated patients eventually, or as
the result of the analysis of pathology after complications, is
ultimately going to be very important.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: I think the point had been made earlier that when you have
repeated administration of DMSO it\'s not coming into the same vessel
for the most part. You\'re going to be getting different feeding
vessels, so that I think allays some of my concerns.

But just to echo, again, Dr. Haines\' point is there is a lot of
patients who have been treated with this material in Europe and in the
rest of the world. It seems like we should be able to get some
information, and that data is out there. It just needs to be looked at.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Yes. My general sense is that it does seem that near
exposure to DMSO on multiple occasions is not necessarily, in and of
itself, dangerous at the level that is given. I am unclear about its
interaction with surgery and other complicating features that certain
patients may have. So I\'m on the border about its safety in conjunction
with other things.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: Not really anything much more significant than what Dr. Jensen
mentioned earlier about the use of alcohol, or possible use of alcohol
in some of the treatment of AVMs, which is sometimes made available.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: There\'s one other issue that I hadn\'t thought of before ‑‑
was a patient who has been treated with this material, who then
undergoes radiosurgery, since the whole goal of radiosurgery is to
damage the endothelial lining. And if the endothelial lining is already
damaged, could that place the patient at increased risk? I know this is
a surgical application, but as Dr. Becker said, it\'s very important and
the data is out there in Europe.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: No comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: How about our industry representative, Mr. Balo?

MR. BALO: No comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Ms. Wells?

MS. WELLS: No comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Thanks.

My comment ‑‑ I would share I think that I have a little bit of concern,
as do most of the other people, about the repetitive effect of this. I
don\'t think that I\'d really characterize that based on the data that
I\'ve seen as a serious concern, but, again, we don\'t have data on
alcohol-treated AVMs, which are admittedly very uncommon, or those that
might wind up getting radiosurgery, which are more common.

But, again, I think that the possibility of getting some of this
information over the long term, in terms of a post-market evaluation,
might be a way to approach this. So let me just try and summarize this
for Dr. Witten. And if I\'m very much against what many people say, tell
me.

That there are some concerns ‑‑ these are not serious concerns ‑‑ on the
part of the panel about repetitive use of DMSO, because often it\'s
going to be into different vessels, although those concerns I think are
going to rise significantly in patients who have been treated previously
or subsequently with ethanol and will rise in patients who might
subsequently get radiosurgery.

DR. BECKER: Could I ask one other question? I think that people brought
up some concerns about the safety of Onyx in patients getting radiation
therapy, but I would actually wonder how effective radiation therapy
would be if we\'ve got this little concretion that\'s not allowing the
vessel to scar down around itself, which is I think the intended goal of
radiosurgery.

Is there some way you might actually impair the ability of radiosurgery
to obliterate the AVM if you have Onyx in place?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Let\'s move on to the second question, please.

DR. HUDSON: 21 CFR 860.7 states that there is a reasonable assurance
that a device is safe when it can be determined that the probable
benefits to health from use of the device for its intended uses, when
accompanied by adequate instructions for use and warnings against unsafe
use, outweigh any probable risks.

Please discuss whether the data in the PMA provide a reasonable
assurance of safety.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Why don\'t we begin, again, down there at the end
with Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: I think with a certain degree of caution about the points that
I\'ve raised before and the practical neurosurgical applications raised
by Dr. Diaz on other problems, I think I would agree.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: From the data I got, it seems to be reasonable, compatible
with the n-BCA, the penetration issue. That\'s why I raised the two
questions ‑‑ the question about case 6012 and 8011. Is that because more
penetration can cause the venous occlusion to cause secondary
hemorrhage? Is that related or not? That\'s my question.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines.

DR. HAINES: Well, I\'m actually very concerned about this question. I
think that there is an important ‑‑ clinically important difference in
the serious adverse effects between the two groups. All of the deaths
are in the Onyx group. And if we look at just the serious adverse
effects that are attributed to treatment, the rate is twice in the Onyx
group what it is in the other group.

I think the study is not sufficiently powerful to assess even a doubling
of the complication rate. And I think that\'s very concerning.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: I have no specific comments or questions.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Yes. I am also quite concerned about the rate of serious
complications and the limited analysis of that ‑‑ of those situations.
Even the high rate of blood loss in the Spetzler-Martin grade II ‑‑
grade III, relative to the others. So I\'m concerned about the safety in
that regard.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: My earlier comment was really addressed specifically at the
issue of safety, and I really don\'t have any additional things to add,
other than in reality the power of the study is limited. And perhaps a
greater number would answer that question, but from what I see right now
the safety feature is not totally there.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen?

DR. JENSEN: I don\'t have any additional comments.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: I think we should take under advisement the new analysis
that was just shown to us for the first time. I can\'t assess what the
power is in that format. But if you recall, the slide did show that the
treatment ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Would you like to see the slide again?

DR. ELLENBERG: No, I\'m not going to be able to do it on the slide. But
I think that may have some convincing evidence that would speak to the
safety, at least to the degree that we would be looking for
post-marketing surveillance.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. ELLENBERG: But I can\'t be definitive about that at this point.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. The sense that I\'m getting from the panel is
that ‑‑ oh, I\'m sorry. Yes, Mr. Balo.

MR. BALO: No. I agree with Dr. Ellenberg. I think we should give the
sponsor and Dr. Chiacchierini some time to answer the question about
safety in the analysis. I think from all of the panel members we\'re
hearing a concern about safety, and I think this new analysis will
probably shed some light, maybe allay some of the fears that you have
about safety, which we didn\'t have in our panel minutes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Ms. Wells?

MS. WELLS: No comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Again, I\'m getting the sense that there is a general
concern about the safety of the product. I would feel, then, that that
is the general sense of the panel, although longer term data, more data,
I think certainly would seem to be very helpful in this ‑‑ in answering
these concerns.

Number 3.

DR. HUDSON: 21 CFR 860.7 states that there is a reasonable assurance
that a device is effective when it can be determined, based upon valid,
scientific evidence, that in a significant portion of the target
population the use of the device for its intended uses and conditions of
use, when accompanied by adequate directions for use and warning against
unsafe use, will provide clinically significant results.

Please discuss whether the data in the PMA provide a reasonable
assurance of effectiveness.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Reasonable assurance of effectiveness. Dr.
Kurt.

DR. KURT: Well, the points have been validly raised as to whether or not
the bar of the embolic blockage is really sufficient at 50 percent,
whether that should be 75 or 80 percent, whether there should be longer
term followup at six or 12 months, particularly post-surgical followup
of efficacy, and whether there should be other factors such as ‑‑
involved such as in the training and the mentorship, plus the
toxicologic factors that I\'ve pointed out. All of those taken into
consideration? Yes? Okay.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: I don\'t have any additional comment on that.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Dr. Haines.

DR. HAINES: I have no concerns.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Dr. Becker?

DR. BECKER: I have no concerns.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Massaquoi?

DR. MASSAQUOI: Nothing new.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: Nothing.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: Nothing.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: I think I need some guidance in responding to this. Could
someone explain to me the context of a non-inferiority trial in the
words that are in CFR 860.7(e)(1)?

DR. WITTEN: Can you explain your question?

(Laughter.)

DR. ELLENBERG: Well, the goal of the protocol, as I understand it, was
to show in lay terms that Onyx was no different than the standard
approach. The empirical ‑‑ or non-inferior. That\'s not ‑‑ it is
non-inferior. It\'s hard to not have a double negative.

The actual observed result shows that Onyx is actually superior, and I
believe the submitted results show that that result of superiority was
actually statistically significant. If I remember correctly, that result
held under the new FDA analysis that we saw for the first time today,
that\'s somewhere in the .048 or something like that level.

Not as impressive as the results submitted, but nonetheless this is an
active control comparison. It\'s a non-inferiority trial at the onset.
There are a lot of things going on, and this question is sort of
surprising to me at this stage. This is the ultimate question about
efficacy.

Does this panel view that all of the demands have been met to say that
this is at least as good, if not better, than its comparator, which was
an active control, not a placebo control.

That\'s what the question means.

I would say that the answer is yes, conditioned on the outcome that was
in the protocol and presented to us today. If one accepts that outcome
as being indicative of efficacy, then I would say yes, but that\'s, to
me, an important qualification, and nothing more.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: The sense that ‑‑ I\'m sorry. Go ahead. Mr. Balo.

MR. BALO: I do agree that the sponsor has, according to their protocol,
demonstrated, you know, its efficacy endpoint. It has shown a comparison
to the only device out there that is used in embolism, and I do think
that ‑‑ I think there\'s been a lot of side questions brought up here,
but I think if you\'re talking to primary endpoint, the sponsor has
demonstrated efficacy to the primary endpoint, which was agreed to with
the FDA.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Ms. Wells.

MS. WELLS: I agree with Mr. Balo.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Dr. Witten, the sense that I get from the panel
is that everyone feels that there generally is ‑‑ has been showing a
reasonable assurance of effectiveness, at least that it\'s no worse than
the currently available n-BCA.

DR. HUDSON: A number of complications were observed in the study that
appear to relate to the user training. Of particular concern were three
device-related complications: difficulty in removing the catheter, 10 in
Onyx and zero in n-BCA; catheter shaft rupture, two in Onyx, zero in
n-BCA; and poor penetration/visualization, five in Onyx and zero in
n‑BCA.

Please comment on the sponsor\'s proposed training plan and whether you
believe it is adequate to help ensure proper device use.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Let\'s just begin again. Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: I don\'t think I have sufficient information on either of
these to give a positive answer. So I either ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: That\'s fine.

DR. KURT: ‑‑ will absent myself or say no.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. That\'s fine.

Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: I don\'t have much comment, but I have a question about, does
the penetration ‑‑ you know, better penetration affect the outcome of
the patient? As I mentioned that two particular patients, is that going
to have a more venous occlusion ‑‑ namely, n-BCA?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Did you want to address that question to the sponsor,
or ‑‑ can we do that? Did you want to address that question to the
sponsor, Dr. Tsai, or ‑‑

DR. TSAI: Yes, sir.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. LARSEN: Dr. Tsai, I just want to confirm, you\'re talking about
patient 8011 and patient 6012?

DR. TSAI: That\'s correct.

DR. LARSEN: Yes. Patient 8011 had a treatment-related hemorrhage on the
third embolization ‑‑ second embolization with Onyx and had an occipital
hematoma after surgery that required repeat surgery. But there is no
indication that there was venous occlusion.

Patient 6012 is the patient that was the death in the study, one of the
deaths. There was no indication that that patient had ‑‑ that was a
death with the intracranial hemorrhage that occurred after surgery. And
that patient did not have any indication that there was a venous
occlusion either.

DR. TSAI: The reason I raised the question ‑‑ because certainly these
two particular cases had two hemorrhage, one after the surgery, and I
don\'t see it on the n-BCA. That\'s why I raised the question in order
to ‑‑ due to a penetration issue and not ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: Patient 6012 only had one hemorrhage. Is that right?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines. Training program?

DR. HAINES: I think that the training program obviously is critically
important and needs to include a mandatory hands-on component. I don\'t
think simple observation and in vitro work is enough. I think the
addition of proctoring is a good idea, and I think the effectiveness of
the training program should be monitored as part of the post-marketing
surveillance.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: I fully agree with Dr. Haines.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Good. Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Right. I don\'t have enough information yet to comment on
the problem of poor penetration and visualization. And I think the
sponsor\'s program is close, but does need to be expanded with mandatory
supervision by not just any clinical specialist but someone who is
capable of removing a catheter should it become clogged, and possibly
some other minor additions.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: Yes. Based on the presentation, I get the feeling that there
is really a significant difference in the ability of use of n‑BCA versus
that of the use of the embolex. And even in the ‑‑ and in the hands of
very experienced catheter people, very experienced embolizers, that was
not quite as simple as they may have thought. Hence, the difficulty in
removing some of those catheters; that was prolonged in some occasions.

Perhaps one or two of them resulted in significant problems, but it is,
from my perspective, an essential to have a training program that is,
like Dr. Haines said, hands-on, closely-monitored, and from which or
through which not everyone, even experienced embolizers, should be
certified to do. So I think this should be the most strict component of
the process.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you.

Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: My previous comments still stand. But in addition, I think
that there should be a system whereby a potential user can actually fail
and not be allowed to use the device. And I think proctoring is
absolutely essential.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: No additional comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. And Mr. Balo.

MR. BALO: I just agree the training program is very critical, and I
think the sponsor has shown a very comprehensive training program, along
with the suggestions of panel. I think it would be adequate.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Ms. Wells.

MS. WELLS: I agree with Dr. Haines.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. I would agree. I think this is absolutely
critical, and it really goes back to the question of safety. And I think
it has the potential to really raise and deal with many of the safety
considerations that have been brought up.

My feeling would also be that mentoring is really going to be a critical
part of this, to have people work with this hands-on, because this stuff
is very difficult to use. If it\'s as difficult as glue, that\'s
difficult. But it\'s difficult but probably different, as Dr. Diaz
mentioned, because people who use glue still seem to have some
difficulty with this. So that\'s going to be a critical point.

Dr. Witten, my sense is, then, that the panel feels that the training
program is critical, but needs to have, in addition, mandatory mentoring
with a hands-on component of that.

DR. HUDSON: Okay. The last question ‑‑ the device is intended for
presurgical embolization, and, therefore, the material is meant to be
removed during surgical resection of the AVM. Although patients were
enrolled in the study based upon the criterion that they were surgical
candidates, in some cases the clinical course of treatment changed such
that some patients did not undergo surgical excision post-embolization.

Considering that it is probable that this scenario will also arise under
clinical use, if you recommend approval, do you believe a long-term
followup study for patients not undergoing surgical resection of their
AVM should be conducted as a condition of approval?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: Very definitely, based upon the points that I\'ve raised
earlier, because we really do not know what happens chronically to the
histopathology.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: I don\'t have any additional comment. Maybe I defer to our
surgical colleague to make additional comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines.

DR. HAINES: It\'s essential, and it\'s unfortunate we don\'t have some
of that data from the European experience already.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: I agree long-term followup is really important, but I
wouldn\'t just restrict it to patients who don\'t undergo surgery. I
think that the surgical patients need long-term followup as well.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Yes, I agree with long-term followup.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: I think long-term followup is fundamental, not only from the
perspective of what will happen to the tissue that has been treated, but
whether the malformation is going to grow, recur, expand, or create
further problems.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: I think it\'s absolutely mandatory, and I think angiography
will probably be required to see if it continues to remain efficacious
in that patient population.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: I concur completely.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. And I would agree with I think what the sense
of the panel is is that it\'s absolutely mandatory, that it probably
should include angiography as well as an imaging component to get a look
at what exactly is going on long-term here. So that\'s what I would
convey to Dr. Witten as being the sense of this.

DR. ELLENBERG: And it\'s also all patients.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes.

DR. WITTEN: Pardon me?

DR. ELLENBERG: The question from the FDA is whether or not those not
going out for surgery should be followed. My sense is that certainly I
think ‑‑ and I heard specific mention that there should be more than
just those that didn\'t go on to surgery. There should be some subgroup
of patients that have a ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: The FDA question was addressed to those not
undergoing surgery. My feeling is that it\'s the sense that everyone
should undergo that. Is that wrong? Does someone disagree with me? Okay.
I think the sense is that patients who are embolized with this should
get some long-term followup.

DR. WITTEN: Just wondering if anybody wants to define \"long term.\"

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Kurt.

DR. JENSEN: Well, I think in terms of the gamma knife patients, at least
we have two years. I mean, you know, so ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. JENSEN: ‑‑ at least a two.

DR. KURT: I agree with the two years.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Two years? Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: Yes, I agree with that.

DR. HAINES: It\'s a little short. It\'s a little short. The radiosurgery
patients reach 80 percent occlusion at three years, and, I mean, this
goes on a long time. Five?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: The number that occurred to me was also five years in a
subset of patients.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: No choice.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: I do a fair amount of radiosurgery in addition to conventional
surgery, and usually the prognosis that I give my patients is that three
years minimum before we see the real effect of 85 percent efficacy
resolution of the problem. And to that you add those that do not
resolve, so three to five seems reasonable.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Does the panel feel that the same length of followup
should be for people who have surgery as who don\'t have surgery?

DR. DIAZ: I am not really totally convinced that those that had surgery
and had a successful outcome after a year really need anything further,
if there is no imaging changes? I\'m really concerned with those that
didn\'t have surgery.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: The long-term radiosurgery people. Mr. Balo.

MR. BALO: I have no comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Ms. Wells.

MS. WELLS: No comment.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. And I would agree with that. My feeling is that
probably after a year of those that have had surgery that the imaging
followup, angiographic followup, is probably sufficient. But people who
have undergone radiosurgery, where we know that\'s in there, where we
know there\'s active changes that we have engendered in the brain,
probably should get five-year followup. Is that reasonable?

And I think that it would be ‑‑ followup would be different for people
who undergo surgery and who don\'t undergo surgery. Those who don\'t
undergo it, a five-year long-term followup; and those who do, one year.

DR. TSAI: I have a question.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes.

DR. TSAI: You mentioned a five-year followup. Is that those patients
incomplete after two years? Most of radiation surgery we follow up at
two years. If that totally obliterated it, we have the followup another
two or three years, or if they\'re incomplete.

DR. HAINES: Essentially, you can stop following people when you have
evidence of complete obliteration. So it\'s not really surgery or not
surgery. But if you have definitive evidence of complete obliteration,
you can stop following them up.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Becker, anything to add? Dr. Massaquoi? Dr. Diaz?
Okay.

And I think that that is important, that when we find complete
obliteration of one of these lesions, that the long term should stop.

Why don\'t we go ahead and take a 10-minute break, and then we\'ll get
back to the second public hearing.

(Whereupon, the proceedings in the foregoing matter went off the record
at 3:44 p.m. and went back on the record at 4:06 p.m.)

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Why don\'t we go ahead and get started.

Now that the panel has addressed the FDA questions, we will have the
second open public hearing on the MTI Onyx Liquid Embolic System. Is
there anyone wishing to address the panel now? And I think there is. Why
don\'t ‑‑

MS. SCUDIERO: Would you like to speak in your sponsor time, the
summation time? Or do ‑‑

MS. WALTERS: Yes, we would like to speak and address these issues.

MS. SCUDIERO: You wish to speak both times? I\'m not sure.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Right now or later?

MS. WALTERS: I think we\'d like to speak right now, if that\'s
appropriate.

MS. WELLS: What she\'s saying is there\'s a formal time after the open
public session for you guys to ‑‑ for you, the sponsor, to say whatever
you want.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So you get a summation after the FDA gives a
summation. But you\'d like to do it now.

MS. WALTERS: We\'d just like to take the opportunity to answer some of
the questions that have ‑‑

MS. WELLS: Why don\'t you speak into the microphone.

MS. WALTERS: We\'d just like the opportunity to address some of the
questions raised by the panel and the members, if it\'s appropriate to
do so at this time.

MS. SCUDIERO: Could you wait until like after the open public hearing?
And I ‑‑

MS. WALTERS: Sure.

MS. SCUDIERO: No one has asked to speak, so it\'s going to be almost ‑‑
we\'ll just follow the schedule, and then you take as much time as you
need.

MS. WALTERS: Thank you very much.

MS. SCUDIERO: Okay.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there anyone from the public who wishes to make
any statements during the second public session? Okay. So we\'re here.

It\'s time for the FDA and sponsor summations. Is there any further
comment or clarification from anyone in the FDA? Dr. Hudson, Dr.
Costello, or Ms. Chen.

MS. WELLS: No, we don\'t have anything further to present.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Okay.

And, Ms. Walters, clarification from the sponsor?

MS. WALTERS: Sure. We\'d like to take the opportunity to review some of
the key questions that were raised by the panel and during the
deliberations. And so I\'d like to ask Dr. Duckwiler to address some of
the safety issues.

DR. DUCKWILER: In the original presentation of the IDE, I did not
include or discuss extensively the association of the serious adverse
events by various category other than associated with the device, since
we are interested in the device and its associated complications.

And since then, several questions have come up regarding the association
of surgery. So does the device actually ‑‑ is the device actually
associated with greater surgical complications? Actually, our
adjudication board had looked at the relationship of complications to
the surgical procedure, and they are listed for you there.

So we can see that for ‑‑ the one of significant concern was
intracranial hemorrhage. There was really no difference in the n-BCA
group and the Onyx group. So it does not appear that intracranial
hemorrhage associated with surgery, or, in fact, any surgical
complication or complication related to the surgical episode was any
different between the two groups.

And, in fact, the n-BCA group had 17 total serious adverse events versus
10. And this is a hierarchical group, so the worst complication is
listed as the major complication.

So severe bleeding, intracranial hemorrhage, throughout this list really
roughly equivalent with the total number being higher. But specifically,
that issue related to intracranial hemorrhage and use of Onyx.

Amy, could I have the next slide?

This is disease. Next slide, please.

I won\'t go through the other associations with treatment or the disease
process. Another question was about the surgical blood loss, and
concentration was on the mean blood loss. But there was, indeed, one
patient who was multiple standard deviations beyond the mean. That was a
patient who had seven liters of blood loss in the ‑‑ that patient had a
grade III Spetzler-Martin grade.

But if we really look at the median blood loss in the two groups,
excluding that one patient, then the amount of blood loss was roughly
equivalent, so again indicating that the surgical procedure associated
with Onyx is really not significantly different than associated with
n-BCA. No increased risk of intracranial hemorrhage, and median blood
loss is similar.

Next slide.

And to discuss this further, looking at the logistic regression model
for serious adverse events, I would think that what we\'re really
looking at here is that when we discuss these various factors,
presumably many of these factors are included in ‑‑ and some of these
other factors that were more significant.

So the Spetzler-Martin grade, you can imagine the higher the size, the
greater the volume of the maximum feeder. The larger the Spetzler-Martin
grade, the greater the blood loss at surgery. In this logistic
regression model, if one of these factors is greater than the other
factors, the other factors are lost.

So what we\'re doing is we\'re probably finding out more about a
cross-product of not only the size but the flow through the malformation
in this model when we look at something like volume of maximum feeder.

Notably missing from this, again, is the use of DMSO or the treatment
group. So if any ‑‑ if DMSO was associated with increased serious
adverse events, it should have appeared here. If the group treated with
Onyx was greater than that treated with n-BCA, it should appear here, if
it was, in fact, associated with greater adverse events.

So, and that does not occur in this group.

Can I have the next slide?

To discuss briefly ‑‑ and I will give the podium to Dr. Benkendorf in a
second ‑‑ but the issue about DMSO and long-term effects. DMSO is given,
and it\'s given as a priming dose. And, again, the DMSO reaches a large
volume of dilution once it hits the feeding vessel. Or even in a wedged
position it is an AVM pedicle, and so there is a large volume of blood
in association with that wedged position.

So there is a significant dilution, and the irritation associated with
DMSO is, as was stated by Dr. Hudson, once it\'s diluted by 50 percent,
it has really no irritative effects.

It is gone in 14 days. So long-term effects should not be discernable
after 14 days. And, in fact, in the patients who had surgery, in our
Phase I study, we had patients who had pathologic examination at one day
‑‑ or immediate, same-day surgery, delayed from surgery one to two days,
at a week post-surgery, and at 12 to 14 days post-surgery.

And in none of those cases was there any breakdown of the wall, loss of
material beyond the wall, and nothing more than the standard pathologic
changes you would see with any embolization agent, DBA, or n-BCA.

And, in fact, in the 14 days, other than the embolic material in the
vessels, all there were were foreign body giant cells in association.

I will let Dr. Benkendorf address some other issues perhaps about DMSO.

DR. BENKENDORF: Hello. I am Carol Benkendorf. I\'m a consulting
toxicologist to MTI. I have no interest in the company, but I have been
paid for my time and expenses.

As I understand it, your panel packets probably did not include the
white paper that was written on DMSO. Is that true? But anyway, FDA
raised the question last fall as to what were the toxic effects of DMSO.

And they asked us to address certain classifications. They wanted ADME
studies, they wanted toxicity, acute toxicity, repeated dose, whatever
we could find, effects on various systems as well as the worst-case
scenario. So this is what we did, and I\'d just like to show you some
major points from this.

We talked a little bit about absorption. Absorption occurs by all
routes. It\'s very rapid. If you rub it on your skin, yes, it will get
to your brain. If you use 100 percent DMSO, it\'s very ‑‑ it causes
severe irritation. The minute it is diluted ‑‑ the minute it contacts
body fluids it is diluted.

In a 50 percent dilution, the irritation goes away. So what you would
expect from administration into the vein is some irritation. It would be
very minute, because the minute the blood or body fluids contact it the
irritation goes away. So you only see it when you\'re giving very large
doses.

The other complication when you give IV administration is hemolysis. And
virtually all of the toxic effects of DMSO result from this hemolysis.
Very high doses, you get respiratory failure. You get kidney failure
based on the breakdown products from the hemolyzed red blood cells.

At moderate doses, the body has the capacity to repair that damage. And
even though you see the hematuria, etcetera, and the decreased cell
counts, the body repairs itself. At the doses that we see it in this
device, you might get a few hemolyzed red cells, but you would not get
enough damage to do any damage.

In the long-term studies ‑‑ well, if we go to the next slide ‑‑ it shows
how it\'s rapidly distributed. It seems to have some preference for soft
tissues. About the only tissues it doesn\'t penetrate are enamel and
bone. Distributed throughout the total body water, they have never been
able to figure out why it goes to certain tissues. It isn\'t based on
fat solubility or anything like that.

Next slide.

About 50 percent of the DMSO is metabolized, most of it to DMSO~2~,
which is even more innocuous than DMSO. The DMS is excreted in the air.
That\'s where you get the garlic-like breath.

The T one-half for elimination is about four days. So you\'re not going
to have it around. It does not sequester in the body at all. And one of
the nice things about it is that it seems to be able to pass through
membranes readily. Yet, actually, as it distributes, however, it tends
to go between the intercellular spaces.

Next slide.

Here we showed ‑‑ this is a little bit ‑‑ I think you saw the red and
green slide that Bill Patterson showed. It shows it takes extremely high
doses to get LD50\'s. Near the intermediate doses you get the damage to
erythrocytes.

At low doses there was a National Academy of Science review that decided
that a therapeutic dose ‑‑ they were talking about dermally ‑‑ is one
gram per kilogram. And about 80 percent of the DMSO is absorbed if you
apply it to the skin.

So we ‑‑ I feel that we are at a very safe dose with this product.

Here, just a little bit of history of where all of this talk about
angiotoxicity may have come from. I guess I want to see the next slide
first. Wilson did a study back in 1965 in dogs. He intended to inject
them six days a week for four weeks, and he found out that after half
the doses that the veins were becoming occluded, because he was using
100 percent DMSO.

When he reduced that to 50 percent, he was able to continue the study,
and he did get these effects that have been noticed, but he felt that
those came from use of the 100 percent.

There was some question about what volume would be safe, and I think on
the next slide I have ‑‑ well, I\'m sorry. Go one more. No? Can\'t find
it.

This was another study done in rats where they used 70 percent, and a
continuous infusion rate for 120 hours. They did find hemolysis, but the
animals all survived. But there was another study I was going to show
you. It was the sub-Q study, where they gave I think it was rats at two
and a half grams per kilogram, and they found no systemic effects.

So I think that shows that it\'s not the volume that causes problems;
it\'s the route. It\'s the irritation to the vein. So as long as you can
control that delivery, why it should be all right.

Thank you.

MS. WALTERS: Now I\'ll ask Dr. Duckwiler to talk further about some of
the issues that were raised during the panel discussion related to
safety.

DR. DUCKWILER: Thank you.

Just briefly on hemolysis, you know, throughout the study laboratory
evaluations were done, and in no case did we see a dramatic drop in the
hematocrits associated with the use of DMSO, as might be expected from
large hemolysis.

I would address a couple other issues. Number one, about the use of this
agent in association with radiation therapy, the company is asking for
this as a presurgical indication. It\'s not intended to be used with
radiosurgery. The company is not looking for preradiosurgery as an
indication.

So in the discussions, there was some question of followup for patients
who had radiosurgery. And I would question whether that would be
feasible, given the fact that it is only indicated for presurgical use.

Another question was about the catheter rupture, the two occurrences of
catheter rupture. Those both occurred with the FlowRider catheter, and
one of those ‑‑ only one of those cases resulted in a complication that
was transient, neurologic worsening. The second case was ‑‑ the rupture
was associated with contrast injection.

As we had talked earlier, that feedback and hand-eye visualization of
the contrast is necessary to assure that if a rupture occurs it\'s
detected early. And that catheter, of course, has been redesigned. It\'s
no longer on the market. That was the FlowRider catheter. Now it\'s been
replaced by the UltraFlow, which has not been associated with any
catheter ruptures.

Another question was about the poor visualization. The comments related
to ‑‑ on the case report forms, none of the cases of poor visualization
were associated with any clinical sequelae. There were five reports. All
those reports came from two centers. At the same time, the
controllability associated with the use of Onyx was rated as excellent
and better than n-BCA.

So although there were five reports of poor visualization,
controllability was rated as excellent compared to n-BCA.

One technical issue related to poor visualization. As I showed, you are
injecting, at least on average in our cases, .5 cc\'s over 5.4 ‑‑ five
minutes and 44 seconds. So the rate is quite a bit different from the
n-BCA, and I personally believe that some of this is related to that
visual process.

If you inject a radio-dense material very quickly, over three to 30
seconds, you are going to get accumulation of radiopaque material very
quickly. If you have a similar ‑‑ exact same radiopaque material, but
you\'re injecting it at .5 cc\'s over five and a half minutes, your rate
of visualization of that material is going to be quite a bit lower.

And so it is ‑‑ it\'s ‑‑ I would state that it\'s not that it is less
visible than n-BCA, but it is partially related to the injection rate
and the material and accumulation of radiopaque material within the
nidus. Again, those five reports were from two centers only.

And, in fact, that slow injection is really relevant to the training. On
a personal note, when I am ‑‑ we have a fellowship at our institution,
and when I train fellows using this material it\'s certainly quite a bit
easier than training for using n-BCA.

When you\'re injecting something that polymerizes at a very high rate ‑‑
and, again, you\'re doing a 3-, 10, 5-second injection, a lot of things
happen very quickly. And training somebody to use n‑BCA is quite a bit
more difficult than if you have five minutes of injection, and you can
pause that injection at any time.

So I would state that many of the benefits associated with Onyx are
related to its formulation and its handling characteristics, and, in
fact, that slow injection is quite an advantage.

With that, I\'ll turn back to Amy for answering the other questions.

MS. WALTERS: Another few questions that were raised were regarding the
reuse of the catheter, and that was a question raised in the preclinical
section. There were the devices ‑‑ and it\'s always used with a
single-use device catheter that is compatible with the Onyx
formulations.

Again, we had another comment related to the fact that ‑‑ regarding the
labeling on the Onyx catheter, and talking about some of the
descriptions of Onyx as being non-adhesive, and wanting some
clarification around that with regard to the difficulty in catheter
removal.

And I think Dr. Duckwiler has addressed that rather thoroughly in terms
of the fact that there were no glued-in catheters in this trial, and
that the catheters that were difficult to remove were all removed and no
further surgical intervention was required.

And, again, I think we are going to just take one last look at our panel
and see if we have anything else to address. Dr. Duckwiler?

DR. DUCKWILER: Sorry. I think there\'s a long list of questions. All
right. One of the questions that was ‑‑ or one of the statements that
was made I think was about the coil use. It was stated that in the n-BCA
group there were increased use of coils, because there were more fistula
‑‑ there were not more fistula in the n-BCA group, but there was more
coil usage in the n-BCA group because there were fistula.

So the slide actually read \"Reasons for Coil Usage,\" and in 20 of the
cases of n-BCA it was because there was a fistula, not because there
were 20 more cases in the n-BCA group associated with fistula.

And, again, in the multivariate analysis, in terms of the ‑‑ I\'d just
to reiterate that DMSO was not associated with any of the ‑‑ not
associated in the multivariate analysis, linear regression analysis with
the complications.

And in our followups, in all of the MRIs and CTs that were done, there
were no imaging abnormalities that could be attributable to the Onyx
material or to DMSO, and that was stated from our safety board, as well
as the FDA radiologist reviewing those studies.

Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Thank you.

We\'re going to move on to the voting. I might ask the sponsors to go
ahead and move back to their previous locations.

Sure, one more question.

DR. MASSAQUOI: I wasn\'t clear whether ‑‑ just to be sure, Dr.
Duckwiler, as far as the late bleeds in the surgical bed, are those
considered ‑‑ were those counted as surgically-related hemorrhages?

DR. DUCKWILER: Yes, I should have Dr. Larsen say that. The total number
was not different in the two groups, but any hemorrhage that was done
had to be associated, and if it was during or after the surgical episode
associated with surgical episode. Because remember, our data collection
ended after the patient had the operation.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Okay. And then, also, is there any ‑‑ in principle, any
limitation on the concentration of tantalum that you could place into
the mix, so that at slow rates it would still be visualizable?

DR. DUCKWILER: The material comes premixed, so the Onyx 18 and 34
already has the tantalum premixed in it, and ‑‑

DR. MASSAQUOI: I\'m saying in your formulation. In other words, if your
recommended administration rate is very low, and at that rate it\'s hard
to see, does it make sense to increase the concentration of tantalum so
that even at slow rates it has visualization properties that are the
same as the others?

DR. DUCKWILER: I should probably leave that to the chemists in the
group.

DR. LARSEN: One of the advantages of the Onyx, even though you have to
give the slower injection, you have the ability to do a contrast
injection around the guide catheter, because you have increased length
of time. So you can tell how your embolization is going more real time,
where you can\'t do that at all with Onyx, with n-BCA.

So it adds this extra margin of visualization, but perhaps you\'re not
getting to see every drop as it comes out as clearly as you could with
n-BCA. But you are able to monitor its effectiveness on the fly with
contrast injections through the guiding catheter.

DR. MASSAQUOI: I\'m just wondering, is it hard, or is it easy to
actually make it so that you get reports from the physicians that say
it\'s just as easy to visualize as the ‑‑

DR. LARSEN: I\'d have to refer to the chemists.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Okay.

MS. WALTERS: We\'re going to have Dr. Patterson describe the Onyx
formulation with enhanced radiopacity.

DR. PATTERSON: So can I hear your question one more time? Just to make
sure I ‑‑

DR. MASSAQUOI: It\'s just that it doesn\'t make sense that if you want
to infuse this slowly, and there\'s a certain concentration of tantalum,
and when you infuse it slowly enough you can\'t see it, that the
visualization is relatively poor. Can you easily increase the
concentration of the tantalum, so that even at low flow rates you can
have visualization that\'s very good?

DR. PATTERSON: The answer is yes. We can double the concentration
roughly of the tantalum in suspension and get even higher levels of
visualization. And it\'s consistent with what we\'ve seen as we\'ve
developed the product ‑‑ that we\'ve checked it out in vitro with our
own X-ray source, taken it to the physicians, received their approval
that, yes, this visualization is adequate.

And, of course, fluoroscopic systems vary from site to site.
Nevertheless, we\'ve addressed this with the ‑‑ what we call an LD Plus
version of the product, more tantalum, available in Europe with good
success on the visualization.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Okay. And then, finally, is it ‑‑ and this might not be
possibly in your area. Is there a way to simply put a pressure release
valve so that you can\'t exceed a certain pressure?

DR. PATTERSON: Is it possible? Of course.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Is it feasible or practical?

DR. PATTERSON: I defer completely to my customer requirements for my
physicians, like Dr. Duckwiler, who ultimately we design the products
for. And if their feedback is, we want tactile feedback, and we want to
be able to sense that and control that, that\'s the way we design the
product.

DR. MASSAQUOI: No, no. Actually ‑‑ it\'s actually taking that into
consideration, that you leave the tactile feedback. But if there\'s a
kink, or if there\'s a pressure surge, that that is released
automatically. In other words, there\'s a maximum level beyond which the
device will not deliver either flow or pressure.

DR. PATTERSON: Sure. I understand the question.

DR. DUCKWILER: There actually was a device marketed by a company that
actually did that thing, and it was withdrawn because sales were low.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Because sales were low? Why was that?

DR. DUCKWILER: Because the physicians didn\'t think they needed it.

DR. MASSAQUOI: They didn\'t ‑‑

DR. DUCKWILER: They just didn\'t like it. They didn\'t think they needed
it. But there has been intellectual property in that area, and there has
been a marketed product, but it\'s no longer used.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. We\'ll move on to the voting. Ms. Scudiero will
now read the panel recommendation options for premarket approval
applications.

MS. SCUDIERO: Hi. These are the three premarket approval applications,
panel recommendation options.

The medical device amendments to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic
Act, as amended by the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990, allows the Food
and Drug Administration to obtain a recommendation from an expert
advisory panel on designated medical device PMAs that are filed with the
agency.

The PMA must stand on its own merits, and your recommendation must be
supported by the safety and effectiveness data in the application, or by
applicable publicly-available information.

Safety is defined in the Act as reasonable assurance, based on valid
scientific evidence, that the probable benefits to health under the
conditions of intended use, outweigh any probable risk. Effectiveness is
defined as reasonable assurance that, in a significant portion of the
population, the use of the device for its intended use and conditions of
use, when labeled, will provide clinically significant results.

Your recommendation options for the vote are as follows. One is
approval, if there are no conditions attached.

Two, approvable, with conditions. The panel may recommend that the PMA
be found approvable based ‑‑ subject to specified conditions, such as
physician or patient labeling, education, labeling changes, or further
analysis of existing data. Prior to voting, all of the conditions should
be discussed by the panel.

Three is not approvable. The panel may recommend that the PMA is not
approvable if the data do not provide reasonable assurance that the
device is safe, or if a reasonable assurance has not been given for ‑‑
that the device is effect under the conditions of use prescribed,
recommended, or suggested in the proposed labeling.

After the voting, the Chair will ask each panel member to present a
brief statement outlining the reasons for his or her vote.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Are there any questions from the panel about these
voting options before I ask for a main motion on the approvability of
this PMA? No? Is there a motion? Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: I move that the application under consideration be
approvable with conditions.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second?

DR. BECKER: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Very good.

Okay. So we need to identify the specific conditions and vote on each
condition individually before we vote on the main motion of approvable
with conditions. There is no limit to the number of conditions.

I\'ll now entertain an amendment to the main motion for the first
condition of approvability. Is there a motion for a condition of
approvability? Dr. Kurt.

DR. KURT: Yes, sir. I have conditions, and then I will defer to Dr. Diaz
for potential post-surgical conditions, Dr. Jensen, and Dr. Ellenberg.

MS. SCUDIERO: This is just for the first condition.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Just for the first condition.

DR. KURT: Okay. My first condition ‑‑ and I\'ve written this down, to
pass on to the Chair ‑‑ is that angiotoxicity and vasculitis be
histopathologically reported in brains of any ‑‑ deaths in brain
biopsies of proximal tissue and surgically excised Onyx and the subset
of patients be investigated.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second for the first condition of
approval?

DR. DIAZ: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there any discussion on that condition? Very good.

We\'re now ready to vote on the first condition of approval. All in
favor of the first condition of approval, please raise your hand. And
I\'m going to state each person\'s name for the record. Dr. Kurt, Dr.
Tsai, Dr. Haines, Dr. Becker, Dr. Massaquoi, Dr. Diaz, Dr. Jensen, and
Dr. Ellenberg. So no one is opposed? Anyone abstaining? No one is
abstaining.

Is there a motion for the second condition of approval? Yes, sir.

DR. KURT: My second motion to move that hemolysis in the human model be
investigated by a subset of patients by checking plasma hemoglobin and
haptoglobin post-injection.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second to this second condition?

DR. DIAZ: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Is there discussion of this condition? All
right. Then, let\'s vote on the second condition of approval. All in
favor, please raise your hand. All in favor include Dr. Kurt, Dr. Tsai,
Dr. Diaz, and Dr. Jensen. All opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. And Dr.
Haines and Dr. Becker abstaining. Oh, I\'m sorry, and Dr. Ellenberg.

Let\'s move on to the third condition. Is there a motion for a third
condition of approval?

DR. KURT: Yes, sir.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes.

DR. KURT: I move that the storage stability over time and temperature of
the Onyx mixture be investigated.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second?

MR. BALO: I don\'t know if that\'s condition or ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: It doesn\'t sound like we have a second.

MR. BALO: It doesn\'t sound like a condition to me.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes?

MR. BALO: They had to establish storage, and they have requirements and
they have testing to show that those storage requirements can be met. So
I don\'t know how that can be a condition, to my viewpoint.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: What was that again, Dr. Kurt, your motion?

DR. KURT: I will modify that motion, therefore, that it be reported to
the FDA whether there is any off-gassing or disappearance of DSMO or a
reaction of ‑‑ reactants or degradation products in the storage of the
mixture.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Do we have a second for that motion? Okay. We have no
second for that motion. I guess we don\'t do anything further with that,
then, with no second.

Is there another condition of approvability?

DR. KURT: One last point, that the labeling be remedied to reflect the
information to point out that the Onyx-related catheters do become
stuck, and that the n-BCA catheter, although adhesive, apparently has a
lower rate of such, or some modification of that that\'s acceptable to
FDA.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. So I\'m hearing a labeling indication
indicating a risk of retaining the catheter. Is that a reasonable way ‑‑
I just want to make sure that I\'m understanding.

DR. KURT: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Is there a second for that motion?

DR. JENSEN: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Seconded. Let\'s go ahead. All in ‑‑ is there
discussion of that motion? All in favor? Okay. Dr. Kurt, Dr. Tsai, Dr.
Haines, Dr. Becker, Dr. Massaquoi, Dr. Jensen, and Dr. Ellenberg. Is
there a ‑‑

DR. DIAZ: I abstain.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Oh, I\'m sorry. And one abstention ‑‑ Dr. Diaz.

Is there a motion for a fourth condition of approval? Yes, Dr.
Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: As a condition, there be a post-marketing followup of the
patients on the extant study for three to five years for those that have
not had a successful resection, and for one year for those that have.

DR. JENSEN: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. And we have a second. Is there discussion on
that motion? Okay. Let\'s have a vote. All in favor of that motion,
raise your hand. And that is Dr. Ellenberg, Dr. Jensen, Dr. Diaz, Dr.
Massaquoi, Dr. Becker, Dr. Haines, Dr. Tsai, and Dr. Kurt. So that is
unanimous.

Is there a fifth motion, fifth condition of approval? Yes, Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: Concerning the training program, that prior to being able to
use this product in a human, a physician has to undergo training that
includes hands-on observing the material under fluoroscopy, use of both
types of material, both viscosities, and that they have at least one
proctored case ‑‑ their first patient ‑‑ by a qualified individual.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second to that motion?

DR. HAINES: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines. Any discussion on that motion? Yes, Dr.
Tsai.

DR. TSAI: If the first case, the proctored case, fails, I think we need
to continue proctor those additional cases.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is that ‑‑

DR. JENSEN: That would be fine, yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. JENSEN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Why don\'t we go ahead, then. Any further discussion?
Let\'s vote on that motion. All in favor, raise your hand. That is Dr.
Ellenberg, Dr. Jensen, Diaz, Massaquoi, Becker, Haines, Tsai, and Kurt.

Any other conditions of approval? Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: Yes. That following the market release of the product there
should be a concerted effort from the company\'s perspective to collect
and report to the FDA all of the European data that has been accumulated
and exists currently in many of the centers that have done this
procedure in Europe, and be provided to the panel or to the FDA for
further review.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is there a second to that motion?

DR. ELLENBERG: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Seconded. Discussion? Let\'s go ahead and vote on
that. All in favor of that motion, raise your hand. And that is Dr.
Ellenberg, Jensen, Diaz, Massaquoi, Becker, Haines, Tsai, and Kurt.

Yes. Further conditions?

DR. ELLENBERG: Further condition for premarketing, that the
recently-submitted analysis by the sponsor on safety be reviewed by the
FDA statistical and clinical staff, and be considered by FDA.

MS. SCUDIERO: I\'m sorry. I didn\'t catch the beginning of that.

MR. BALO: They\'re just asking the FDA to review more information. I
don\'t know if that would be a condition of approval. I mean, they\'re
going to ask for more information anyway.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Maybe restate it.

DR. ELLENBERG: Can you help me on a restatement, then? We have recently
received safety data, and it has not been reviewed, to my knowledge, by
the FDA staff.

MR. BALO: Ask Dr. Witten.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes.

DR. WITTEN: Yes. I just want to clarify what\'s a condition of approval,
which is a condition of ‑‑ we\'re asking you to make a recommendation
based on the data and analyses that we\'ve reviewed, about whether or
not you think a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness has
been shown.

And so something like, you know, reanalysis, more data, you know, more
review, doesn\'t fit into, you know, conditions of approval. I mean,
that would be more something that you would say that you don\'t think
reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness has been shown.

I mean, if that\'s what you thought, then it would lead you to a
different conclusion. But it\'s not really a preapproval condition.
We\'re asking you to make a recommendation based on what you know about
this product to date.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Some of this might, in fact, be addressed by Dr.
Diaz\'s motion about collecting data afterwards, which would be a
condition ‑‑

DR. ELLENBERG: But that\'s post-approval.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: It absolutely would be, because we have to deal with
sort of the post-approval actions of the company, that the approval is
contingent upon their taking these actions after the approval.

DR. ELLENBERG: I understand. But the panel is only empowered to make a
recommendation to FDA for approval, with or without conditions. It is
not empowered to make a decision.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Right.

DR. ELLENBERG: So the analysis on safety, which in my mind is critical
to the issue of whether the second condition for approval has been met,
has not been reviewed by either FDA or extensively by this panel.

So I would find it difficult to not leave in the hands of FDA, based on
assessment of that carefully before they go through with approval, that
would simply be advice from us. So ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Wold that be ‑‑

DR. ELLENBERG: ‑‑ is there a way of phrasing that that is acceptable to
FDA?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Would that be part of the usual process after it\'s
approved with conditions, that FDA would go through and look at that
data?

DR. ELLENBERG: But that condition would not be mentioned if we don\'t
put it in specifically.

DR. WITTEN: Well, let me just say that what we\'re asking you to do is
make a recommendation for whether or not you think safety and
effectiveness has been shown based on what you understand about the
product to date.

So if you think reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness has
been shown, there are some specific focused issues you think need to be
addressed post-approval, you know, those are the kind of post-approval
recommendations, you know, that we, you know, were asking for.

If you think that you\'re not sure that reasonable assurance of safety
and effectiveness have been demonstrated, then, you know, that may not
lead you to, you know, this particular vote. Although I\'m not ‑‑ I\'m
obviously not saying that that\'s the case.

But we\'re asking you, based on the data that you\'ve seen, whether you
think reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness has been shown.
And if you think that additional analyses or additional, you know,
assessments of data need to be reviewed prior to making a determination
of safety and effectiveness, then you\'re telling us that you don\'t
think that we\'ve already reached, you know, enough understanding of the
product that there\'s a reasonable assurance of safety and
effectiveness.

So that wouldn\'t be ‑‑ I guess the short way of saying that is that,
you know, in my mind that\'s not a condition of approval, because we\'re
asking your recommendation on whether or not safety and effectiveness
has already been demonstrated.

And what we are asking for for conditions are specific, focused
suggestions to further enhance our understanding of specific aspects of
the product or product use, which would be the training aspects.

DR. ELLENBERG: Then, let me pose a further question. If I, as a panel
member, a voting panel member, were to abstain, and I gave my rationale
as you have indicated we will do, that rationale would be part of the
record, and you would be presumably influenced one way or another in
reading the record and making your final decision. Is that correct?

DR. WITTEN: Yes.

DR. ELLENBERG: Okay. Thank you. I don\'t have any further conditions,
then.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Any further conditions of approval?

DR. MASSAQUOI: I would like to move that one condition for approval be
that it be noted as a warning or a ‑‑ at least a note that during the
IDE study that all of the fatalities occurred in the Onyx group, but ‑‑
and while there is no specific reason or indication why this might be
specifically related to the therapy, the possible role of the agent in
the surgical complication is unknown.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So we have a motion ‑‑ just so that I understand it
‑‑ for a labeling indication for ‑‑

DR. MASSAQUOI: It\'s a labeling ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: ‑‑ a labeling warning.

DR. MASSAQUOI: ‑‑ a labeling warning.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Warning label on the product indicating possible
adverse outcomes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: Wherever is the suitable place for adverse outcomes. The
point that all of the fatalities occurred in this group, that there\'s
no specific ‑‑ there was no specific indication that the product was at
fault. But there was insufficient data to determine its role.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: So insufficient data to determine some of the adverse
outcomes, some of the fatal adverse outcomes.

DR. MASSAQUOI: That\'s correct.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Is that a reasonable labeling indication that we
could request as a condition of approval?

DR. WITTEN: I think it\'s up to you all to make that recommendation.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay.

DR. WITTEN: But certainly, any kind of labeling safety information would
be ‑‑

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Fine.

DR. WITTEN: ‑‑ an appropriate recommendation.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Very good. Do we have a second for that motion?

DR. ELLENBERG: Second.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Discussion?

MR. BALO: I think the sponsor is probably required to put in their
labeling any type of contraindications or any type of warnings that
happen during the IDE. So I think the sponsor is going to be required to
do that by the FDA anyway.

I don\'t know what specific point you\'re trying to make as a warning,
then. If they did have these deaths, they\'re going to have that in
there. So what would be the warning?

DR. MASSAQUOI: It is our ‑‑ if it is absolutely ‑‑ if attention is
called to that point, that\'s sufficient. I just don\'t know what the
automatic ‑‑ what the default is. In other words, it needs to be
highlighted in a wherever appropriate place.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: I think that it may be possible for us to mention
that we\'d like to have a warning about potentially fatal outcomes with
these in the labeling, and maybe leave it to the FDA staff to
specifically phrase that. Is that reasonable?

MS. SCUDIERO: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. Very good. Any further discussion? Fine. Let\'s
go ahead and vote on that, please. All in favor? Okay. And we ‑‑

MS. SCUDIERO: Was there a second?

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Yes, we did get a second. Dr. Ellenberg.

MS. SCUDIERO: Okay.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Okay. So in favor, Dr. Ellenberg, Dr. Jensen, Dr.
Diaz, Dr. Massaquoi, Dr. Becker, Haines, Tsai, and Dr. Kurt.

Any further conditions? Very good.

We\'ll go ahead, then, and vote on the main motion. It has been moved
and seconded that the premarket approval application P030004 for the
Micro Therapeutics Onyx Liquid Embolic System intended for use in the
treatment of brain arteriovenous malformations when embolization is
indicated to minimize blood loss or to reduce brain AVM size prior to
surgery be conditionally approved with the conditions of approval the
panel has just voted on.

All in favor of the main motion with the identified conditions of
approval, please raise your hand. And that is Dr. Kurt, Dr. Tsai, Dr.
Becker, Dr. Massaquoi, Dr. Diaz, Dr. Jensen, and that\'s it. All
opposed? Dr. Haines. Abstentions? Dr. Ellenberg.

It is the recommendation of the panel that the premarket approval
application P030004 for the Micro Therapeutics Onyx Liquid Embolic
System intended for use in the treatment of brain AVMs when embolization
is indicated to minimize blood loss or to reduce the brain AVM size
prior to surgery be conditionally approved with the previously voted
upon condition.

I\'m now going to ask each panel member the reason for his or her vote,
starting with Dr. Kurt. And then we\'ll ask the consumer and industry
representatives for any comments they might have.

DR. KURT: I would like to reiterate with my presentation that my
construction ‑‑ constructive criticism is given in a way to ensure the
safety of your product, safety and efficacy of your product. And before
you go out and break open your bottles of champagne, that you should
necessarily consider that based upon my experience of sitting on panels
for about 10 years, that this is a cautious approval, in my opinion, and
you should proceed in like manner.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you.

Dr. Tsai.

DR. TSAI: Well, I have similar comments of cautious approval, but I do
believe looking at the statistics, since the Onyx ‑‑ either complication
or efficacy is very similar to the current uses of n-BCA.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Haines.

DR. HAINES: I believe adequate efficacy has been demonstrated, but I\'m
not convinced that we\'ve met a reasonable standard of safety as
expressed previously. And I think that the number of amendments to the
approval substantiates that concern.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thanks.

Dr. Becker.

DR. BECKER: I agree that Onyx is as good as n-BCA. I do have some
concerns about safety, and I think that\'s why the conditions have been
placed, to make sure that you aggressively follow your product in the
post-market setting.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Massaquoi.

DR. MASSAQUOI: I guess I fundamentally believe in the concept behind
what\'s being done, the principles involved. I am, obviously, extremely
concerned about the safety, and do believe that actually if this product
is associated with a number of deaths that it will be a small victory
here. And I highly encourage, and I believe, that the company will do as
much as possible to minimize adverse events.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Diaz.

DR. DIAZ: I believe the word \"caution\" needs to be taken into very
serious consideration by the company, because the approval that we are
promoting here is really with a very serious doubt on safety.

I could have voted just as well as Dr. Haines did, but I believe, having
been on receiving end of dealing with a wounded tiger ‑‑ that is, an
arteriovenous malformation that has ruptured in surgery and is bleeding
like a stuck pig ‑‑ we do not have enough out there to help us deal with
the problem.

So I believe this product is important. It is probably the next best
step we have. But to my satisfaction, the safety has not been proven,
and I believe the FDA should consider very seriously that if those
recommendations we have made for safety reports and followup are not
completed, that the approval should be rescinded.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Jensen.

DR. JENSEN: I believe that your application supports that you are at
least as efficacious as n-BCA in presurgical lesions. I still have
safety doubts. However, concerning safety in the presurgical lesion, it
appears that you have met at least my requirement.

However, I highly recommend that the company take a very proactive role
in following up these patients. And I would be very unhappy to see there
be an attitude of, well, a physician that uses it off label, it\'s their
problem. It is not. It is your problem, and you need to continue to
follow those patients. And I agree with Dr. Diaz that if you choose not
to, then the possibility of rescinding this approval is very great.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Dr. Ellenberg.

DR. ELLENBERG: I believe the sponsor has met the conditions of the
protocol as agreed to by FDA. But I do have doubts in the two areas that
I\'ve mentioned, the first being the safety arena. I believe if the
analysis that was presented to us this morning bears out under FDA
scrutiny, then the safety issue, in my mind, will have been ameliorated
considerably. So I\'m hopeful that that will be reviewed by FDA in the
near future.

The second concern I have is, as I indicated when I made my remarks
earlier, that in spite of the fact that this is being done according to
protocol, I do have concerns about the approaches used in defining the
endpoints as a binary outcome with 50 percent as the measure of success.

And I would like to have seen an analysis that took into account either
cut points different than 50 percent, or a continuous outcome, or some
sort of an outcome related to getting ready to ‑‑ getting the patient
ready for surgery.

It seems to me that that type of further analysis would only enhance the
background information that you would have in promoting this project ‑‑
this approach, which has obvious benefits in terms of what\'s been
described today. And that was the reason for my abstention.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: I\'d like to thank all the members of the panel, and
would like to ask Dr. Witten if she has anything to say here at the end.

DR. WITTEN: No, except also to thank the panel for your careful
consideration of this application, and to thank the FDA staff, who
prepared the presentation, and the sponsor for participating also.

CHAIRPERSON HURST: Thank you. The meeting of the Neurological Devices
Panel is adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 5:03 p.m., the proceedings in the foregoing matter were
adjourned.)