Echo Therapeutics Inc. (OTC:ECTE) is gearing up for a push to land new investors next year, which it expects to be “transformative,” hiring a New York-based investor relations consulting firm to manage a “strategic investor relations campaign.”

Hayden IR will develop and implement the Franklin, Mass.-based company’s bid to attract more investors in 2010. Echo is developing needle-free drug delivery technologies, including a non-invasive, wireless glucose monitoring device and skin preparation system for transdermal drug delivery.

Echo chairman and CEO Patrick Mooney said the company believes it’s poised for “a transformative year” in 2010, as it nears the finish line in the clinical evaluation of the two technologies and goes after clearances from the Food & Drug Administration.

Echo’s banked more than $3.5 million in recent months, raising half a million from Philadelphia-area investors early in December and another $3 million in November from a private stock placement.