In July 2021 it was announced that BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX) had acquired Tepha, Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of a proprietary resorbable polymer technology. SBIR-involved in its early days but not recently, Tepha had been a spin-off of Metabolix, Inc. - itself an SBIR-involved firm - Tepha had been privately held with technology based on the production of pha polymers, and their application in bio-absorbable medical devices. The Company is the exclusive licensee of Metabolix's transgenic pha production technology for in vivo use. The licensed technology includes proprietary methods of production, polymer compositions, methods of purification, as well as medical applications of the pha polymers. Tepha is engaged in the development of a new range of bioabsorbable medical devices for therapeutic applications. The Company has licensed and is applying a patented core technology which allows it to produce bioabsorbable polymers suitable for use in a wide range of implantable products to treat humans with defective tissues and organs. The Company's polymers are produced by a new transgenic production technology which accesses an extensive library of more than one hundred monomer building blocks. By careful selection of these different building blocks, Tepha is able to tailor the properties of its polymers to specific medical applications. Using this polymer design space, it is possible to engineer new medical materials, that cannot be produced by any other means, that have desirable mechanical properties, different rates of bioabsorption, and even produce polymers that can be derivatized with other chemistries. Tepha's polymers evaluated for use in an extensive range of medical devices, including guided tissue regeneration barriers, orthopedic fixation devices, and general surgical products, like sutures, staples, and meshes. Subsequent products included degradable stents, tissue engineering scaffolds, drug delivery systems, ultrasound agents, nerve guides, and medical adhesives.