VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Pervasis Thera pulls in $9.8M for regenerative medicine (release)
• Embrella Cardio receives $2.3M for stroke-prevention heart-surgery devices (release)
• Vivendy Thera raises CHF 17M for rare-disease drug (Private Equity Europe)
• Novacta Bio gets £3.5M grant for anti-infective drugs (release)
• Metavante acquires health-plan admin software co. Bensoft (release)
• Pharma-marketing analyst ImpactRx acquires Paragon Research (release)
• Arteriocyte gets $509K grant for stem-cell work (release)
• HBM BioVentures shoots for Swiss IPO (Reuters)
• Covington Capital assumes control of NGB biotech fund (release)

Pervasis Thera pulls in $9.8M for regenerative medicine — Pervasis Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass., developer of cell-based regenerative treatments, raised $9.8 million in a follow-on to its second funding round. Investors included Flagship Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and Musket Research Associates.

Pervasis is developing a cell-based gel called Vascugel designed to promote healing of blood vessels injured angioplasty to open clogged arteries or other surgical procedures, all of which can induce scarring that might lead to further dangerous blockages. Vascugel contains cells from the blood-vessel lining that have been grown in culture, which release growth factors intended to encourage healthy regrowth of the vessels with a minimum of scar-tissue formation. For more details, see this Technology Review piece here.

The gel is designed to be “wrapped around” injured vessels, and degrades naturally after 30 to 60 days. Pervasis is currently testing Vascugel in kidney-dialysis patients, who frequently have blood-vessel grafts designed to improve blood flow during the toxin-filtering process. Those grafts themselves are often subject to scarring and blockage. The product is currently in mid-stage trials.

One drawback of Vascugel is that it requires open vascular surgery, a much more complicated procedure than angioplasty or the insertion of artery-opening stents, which are minimally invasive procedures that involve the threading of a device into a blocked artery. Pervasis also appears to have plans for some form of minimally invasive use of Vascugel in mind, but the sections of its Web site dealing with those are password-protected.

Vivendy Thera raises CHF 17M for rare-disease drug — Vivendy Therapeutics, a Basel, Switzerland, biotech developing an enzyme-replacement treatment for a rare disease, raised CHF 17 million ($15.5 million) in a first funding round, Private Equity Europe reports. Investors included BioMedInvest AG I, LSP Life Sciences Partners and TVM Capital.

Vivendy, whose Web site is still a stub, is focused on a treatment for mucopolysaccharidosis IVA, or MPS, one of several related conditions in which a genetic malfunction produces deformed enzymes that are crucial to normal cellular metabolism. The Vivendy tack, like those of other biotechs that have targeted these conditions, is to supply replacement enzyme grown up via biotech production. For instance, BioMarin Pharmaceuticals markets drug for MPS types I and VI.

Enzyme-replacement drugs are among the most lucrative treatments in biotech despite the rarity of the conditions they treat. Naglazyme, for instance, wholesales for $1,450 per five-milligram vial. A 40 pound child (18 kilograms or so) would require four vials every week at a cost of $5,800, or just over $300,000 a year. (See the PDF prescribing information here.) The cost for adults could rise to $1 million a year or more.