MivInvestments Inc. has initiated an independent bullish technical trading alert for 11/20/09 on Echo Therapeutics, Inc. (OTC:ECTE.OB). Shares of the company finished the day at $1.35, up 8.15% from the opening bell on heavy buying pressure. The excitement was due to the announcement on positive results of a clinical study testing symphony(TM) tCGM System in Patients with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Despite the fact that there has been a recent common shares financing scheduled, companies usually take their time and let the price consolidate before engaging in these activities, thus a short-term buy could be a smart investment. Towards the end of this alert a technical analysis will also be issued.

According to the ADA, the cost of diabetes care in the United States in 2007 was more than $174 billion, including $116 billion in excess medical expenditures attributed to diabetes and $58 billion in reduced national productivity. The ADA estimates that people with diabetes, on average, have medical expenditures that are approximately 2.3 times higher than the expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes and that approximately $1 in $10 health care dollars is attributed to diabetes. A significant portion of overall diabetes care costs, approximately $7 billion according to industry sources, is attributable to costs associated with monitoring blood glucose levels, and that market segment is projected to grow substantially by 2010 as patients and their physicians seek ways to manage glucose levels more effectively.

About Echo Therapeutics, Inc.

Echo is developing the Symphony tCGM System as a non-invasive, wireless, transdermal continuous glucose monitoring system for patients with diabetes and for use in acute and critical care. Echo’s non-invasive Symphony tCGM System consists of its Prelude SkinPrep System, which incorporates patented and leading-edge skin ablation control technology, and wireless transmission and proprietary transdermal biosensor technologies. Echo’s Symphony tCGM System is designed to provide both diabetes and hospital patients with a reliable, needle-free, easy-to-use, affordable and comfortable-to-wear continuous glucose monitoring device. Echo is also developing its needle-free Prelude SkinPrep System for transdermal drug delivery of a wide range of novel topical reformulations of widely-used, FDA-approved products.

Clinical Pipeline

Symphony™ tCGM System Pipeline

AzoneTS™ Pipeline

Product Information

Symphony™ tCGM System

Transdermal Continuous Glucose Monitoring (tCGM) System

Echo’s Symphony™ tCGM System is a non-invasive (needle-free), wireless, transdermal continuous glucose monitoring (tCGM) system designed to provide reliable, continuous blood glucose data throughout the day and night, improve patient compliance to one-point-in-time glucose testing, and achieve better overall glucose control for people with diabetes and for use in hospital critical care units.

Importance of Continuous Blood Glucose Monitoring

We believe that continuous blood glucose monitoring can be an important part of a diabetes patient’s daily disease management program. Continuous blood glucose monitoring can help plan diabetes treatment, guide day-to-day choices about diet, exercise and insulin use, and avoid unwanted low blood glucose (hypoglycemia) and high blood glucose (hyperglycemia) events and the complications that they can cause. Blood glucose levels are affected by many factors such as the carbohydrate and fat content of food, exercise, stress, illness, and variability in insulin absorption among others; therefore, it is often challenging for diabetes patients to avoid frequent and unpredictable excursions above or below normal glucose levels. Patients are often unaware that their glucose levels are either too high or too low, resulting in their inability to tightly control their glucose levels and prevent the complications associated with unwanted glucose excursions.

In an attempt to achieve and maintain blood glucose levels within a desired range, diabetes patients must measure their glucose levels. The ADA recommends that patients test their blood glucose levels at least three or four times per day; however, despite evidence that intensive glucose management reduces the long-term complications associated with diabetes, industry sources estimate that people with diabetes test, on average, less than twice per day. We believe our Symphony tCGM System has the potential to improve patient compliance to frequent glucose testing, achieve better glucose control and make a positive impact on overall day-to-day diabetes management.

Hospital Critical Care Market

We believe Symphony has the potential to offer a non-invasive, wireless, tCGM solution for use in the rapidly emerging hospital critical care market. A primary cause of infection in critically ill patients is hyperglycemia which is a result of insulin resistance and total parenteral nutrition. Clinical studies have demonstrated that intensive insulin therapy to maintain tight glycemic control significantly reduces patient mortality, complications and infection rates, as well as hospital stays, services and overall hospital costs.

Regular monitoring of blood glucose levels is rapidly becoming a necessary procedure performed by hospital critical care personnel to achieve tight glycemic control and ensure improved patient outcomes. In a recent survey by Boston Biomedical Consultants of more than 60 hospital critical care unit managers and nurse clinicians in the United States, more than 90% of those surveyed acknowledged the benefits of tight glycemic control protocols in the hospital critical care setting. We believe tight glycemic control protocols are becoming the new standard of care in hospital critical care units across the United States, for patients with and without diabetes.

Today, standard practice by critical care nurses is to measure blood glucose at the patient’s bedside periodically. We believe that a CGM system such as Symphony will save valuable nursing time and expense by avoiding the need for frequent blood glucose sampling, in addition to providing more clinically relevant, real-time glucose level and trending information needed to develop better control algorithms for insulin administration.

Diabetes Home Use Market

Diabetes is a chronic and life-threatening disease caused by the body’s inability to produce or properly use insulin, a key hormone the body uses to manage glucose, which fuels the cells in the body. Insulin regulates the uptake of sugar from the blood into the cells. When glucose builds up in the blood instead of going into cells, it can cause the cells to become starved for energy and, over time, damage the eyes, kidneys, nerves or heart. Although not all of the causes of diabetes are known, genetics and lifestyle factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play important roles. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), about 21 million people in the United States, or approximately seven percent (7%) of the population, have diabetes, including over 6 million people who remain unaware that they have the disease. In addition, before people develop Type 2 diabetes (discussed below), they usually have “pre-diabetes,” or blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. According to the ADA, there are 54 million people in the United States who have pre-diabetes.

When blood glucose levels are high, diabetes patients often administer insulin to reduce their blood glucose level. Unfortunately, insulin administration can reduce blood glucose levels below the normal range, causing hypoglycemia. In cases of severe hypoglycemia, diabetes patients risk severe and acute complications, such as loss of consciousness or death. Due to the drastic nature of acute complications associated with hypoglycemia, many diabetes patients are afraid of sharply reducing their blood glucose levels and often remain in a hyperglycemic state, exposing themselves to long-term complications of that condition.

Diabetes is typically classified into two major groups: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 diabetes usually develops in children and young adults and is characterized by the body’s inability to produce insulin. People with Type 1 diabetes rely on frequent administration of insulin to regulate their blood glucose levels. Type 2 diabetes, by far the most common form of the disease worldwide, results when either the body does not produce enough insulin or cells in the body ignore the insulin produced and become insulin-resistant. People with Type 2 diabetes often require diet and nutrition management, exercise, oral medications or insulin administration to regulate their blood glucose levels.

Technical Analysis

Taking a look at the 6 month chart, we notice that the RSI has found consolidation from the 50 – 70 range, thus at its current point in 50, it represents a strong buy based on the fact that it remains oversold at this point. Looking at the MACD and EMA, it is also moving towards a golden cross, and based on the recent buying pressure and strong volume, this shouldn’t be a problem. The next resistance the stock should test would be the around the $1.43 level should the volume continue.

Latest Company News

Echo Therapeutics Announces Positive Results of a Clinical Study Testing Symphony(TM) tCGM System in Patients with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes

FRANKLIN, Mass., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Echo Therapeutics, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: ECTE), a company developing its needle-free Symphony(TM) tCGM System as a non-invasive, wireless, transdermal continuous glucose monitoring (tCGM) system and the Prelude(TM) SkinPrep System for transdermal drug delivery, today announced positive results of a clinical study of its Symphony tCGM System in patients with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Echo’s non-invasive Symphony tCGM System consists of its wireless transmission and transdermal biosensor technologies and its Prelude SkinPrep System, which incorporates leading-edge, needle-free, controlled skin ablation. Echo’s Symphony tCGM System is designed to provide patients with diabetes and critical care patients with a reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use, needle-free continuous glucose monitoring device. The purpose of the study was to test the performance of its new, improved one-piece, cost-effective and easy-to-use biosensor.

“This study represents another major step forward in our Symphony development program,” stated Patrick Mooney, M.D., Echo’s Chairman and CEO. “We believe that we have successfully developed a new cost-effective, one-piece biosensor and, with this study, we have demonstrated improvement in the accuracy of our Symphony system glucose readings. Data from this study demonstrates that Symphony, using the new, improved, cost-effective biosensor, is safe, accurate and reliable at monitoring glucose levels. We look forward to continued progress with our Symphony development program throughout this year and next as we move toward our goal of making Symphony available to patients.”

Study Design

After Prelude skin ablation, ten (10) Symphony tCGM biosensors were applied to subjects with Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes. Venous reference blood samples were taken from intravenous lines at 15-minute intervals for 24 hours and measured on a YSI 2300STAT PLUS laboratory analyzer. At the conclusion of the 24-hour study period, the test skin sites were inspected for redness or any other undesirable effects.

Analytical Methods

CGM performance is evaluated with multiple analytical tools, as defined by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute’s POCT05-A guideline. The primary metric, used to evaluate clinical accuracy, is the continuous glucose-error grid analysis (CG-EGA). The CG-EGA is a categorization of all data pairs based on the clinical significance of the accuracy. Accurate readings result in the same clinical decision when based on the CGM trend vs. the underlying blood glucose fluctuations. Benign errors lead to the same clinical outcome as accurate readings even though the actual clinical decision may differ. Erroneous readings lead to clinical errors. CGM performance is measured as the sum of accurate readings and benign errors. Numerical accuracy is the other key method for evaluating CGM performance. The most widely accepted tool is mean absolute relative difference (MARD). MARD is a standard error calculation tool that is used to measure the average absolute value of the relative (or percentage) difference between two measurements.

Study Results

Using approximately 900 Symphony tCGM glucose readings paired with reference blood glucose measurements, CG-EGA revealed that the accuracy of the Echo’s Symphony tCGM System, measured as a percentage of accurate readings and benign errors, was 97%. The MARD for the study was 12.89%. There were no adverse events reported from the Prelude skin permeation or the Symphony tCGM biosensor.

Disclosure: Long ECTE

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A young and savvy, yet experienced and accomplished investments mogul since ‘01; Michael has amassed a fortune as a private self investor. Recently starting his own successful blog and turning it in to a corporation — MIV Investments Inc., a company offering advice to thousands of people worldwide and attracting contracts from various reputable sources. His articles and publications have been linked to Forbes, CNN Money, Reuters, Bloomberg, and many other top worldwide mainstream media sources.

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