Cryolife Gaps Up to Recent Highs on FDA Approval

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 11, 8:58AM EST

CryoLife, Inc., (CRY-NYSE) is trading up more than 5% pre-market after it announced that it has received 510(k) marketing approval from the FDA for its ProPatch(TM) Soft Tissue Repair Matrix. ProPatch is used to reinforce weakened soft tissues and provides a resorbable scaffold that is replaced by the patient’s own soft tissue, and is developed from bovine (cow) pericardial tissue.

Other current OR potential uses for ProPatch are abdominal and chest wall repair, reinforcement of muscle flap reinforcement, rectal and vaginal prolapse, reconstruction of the pelvic floor, hernias, suture-line reinforcement and reconstruction, tendon repair, rotator cuff, patellar, Achilles, biceps, quadriceps, and elsewhere.

CRY has only seen 2,500 shares trade but the stock gapped up to over $7.00, and that will represent a new 52-week high. The stock has more than doubled off its 52-week lows, but this is still about 80% off of its old highs before it had a death reported from contamination in one of its cadaver tissue products. This is one more step to recouping long-term gains for some of those old hang-on investors who were caught off gaurd and were down 80% or more.

This was a stock for a longtime that the joke was "CRY will make you CRY."

Jon C. Ogg
December 11, 2006

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.