For a community better known for its horse-boarding farms, suburban subdivisions and fading aerospace industry, Chatsworth has a lot of technological innovation going on.

Just take North American Scientific Inc.

South of where teenagers saddle up for riding lessons along Chatsworth Street and a little north of one of engine maker Rocketdyne’s remaining sites, company scientists are developing new ways to attack malignant tumors with rice-sized capsules of radioactive palladium.

Founder and Chief Executive L. Michael Cutrer moved North American Scientific’s home office to Chatsworth in 1999 from North Hollywood to take advantage of a vacancy in one of the community’s numerous office-industrial parks.

“We’ve never really had any trouble sourcing components in the Valley, and we always have been able to hire the people with the skills we need to get the job done,” Cutrer said. “There are lots of advantages to being in this region, especially the workforce.”

North American Scientific, whose approach to cancer treatment is called brachytherapy, is one of more than a dozen medical device companies that call Chatsworth home. And while most are small, employing just five to 30 workers, two others in addition to North American are publicly held, including Chad Therapeutics Inc., which makes home and portable respiratory care devices for patients suffering from pulmonary diseases. The other is Iris International Inc., which develops automated urinalysis systems and diagnostic devices for other bodily fluids.

The community may seem like an unlikely home to biomedical companies, but it is in fact typical of the medical device mini-clusters that have sprung up around Los Angeles County over the past four decades in the shadow of the aerospace industry.

“Chatsworth is really one big business park, and inexpensive space that can be adapted to your needs is important for young device companies,” said Ahmed Enany, director of the Southern California Biomedical Council, a regional trade group.

“On top of that, the skills sets for aerospace and medical device work are similar. In many cases, if you need some metal work done or a plastic injection mold created, all you have to do drive around the corner to find a shop that’s been doing the same thing for the aerospace industry for years,” he said.

Neighboring businesses

In the case of Advanced Medical Innovations, all company President Mike Hoftman has to do is send an employee a few steps down DeSoto Avenue to Jerry Shukartsi’s Alco Precision Inc. whenever he needs a prototype fabricated.

“We have a business community here, built on the defense industry, that supports medical device companies,” said Hoftman.

His specialty is manufacturing I.V. fluid towers for hospitals and clinics. He also markets a line of low-margin surgical supplies, such as safety scalpels and syringe racks, which are designed here but made in China. Rounding out the catalog is a line of gynecological devices that he imports from Europe.

“We did most of our manufacturing ourselves when we started in 1991, but between workers comp insurance and the higher costs of manufacturing in the United States, we had to look to places like China for the low-cost items,” said Hoftman, who nevertheless tries to use local and California vendors as much as possible for his high-margin items.

It’s that kind of loyalty to local businesses that has helped create new markets for suppliers like Alco Precision. Shukartsi opened his doors in 1978 primarily serving aerospace and high-tech customers. He estimates that 45 percent of his business these days is in medical devices, including several out-of-state clients.

Also typical of the mom-and-pop sector of Chatsworth’s device industry is Sandel Medical Industries, which makes a variety of unique devices for the nursing sector, from lightweight ergonomic step stools to adjustable trays for surgical devices.

Owner Dan Sandel thought he was heading into retirement in the mid-1980s when he sold his first medical device firm, Devon Industries, to Tyco International Ltd. But Tyco moved Devon to Texas five years later, and Sandel was left with an empty building and former employees who needed jobs.

Not long after, a nursing contact invited him to a professional meeting, where nurses complained about the lack of products customized to their needs. One suggestion led to Sandel’s Correct Site Surgery Kit, a collection of stickers and temporary tattoos that nurses use to direct a surgeon to where they should operate on a patient.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., said the hodge-podge of micro- to mid-size health industry companies in communities like Chatsworth have played an important role in providing skilled and semi-skilled jobs for workers who might once have been hired by defense contractors.

“These generally are good quality jobs at firms that generally pay benefits,” Kyser said. “But one problem we have in marketing this industry is it that it’s so scattered around the county that it’s hard for people to find it, and often the businesses are private and somewhat secretive about what they do.”