TODAY’S HEADLINES:
- Arbor Surgical draws another $5.5M for heart-valve replacements (VBLS exclusive)
- AstraZeneca spinout Albireo raises $27M for GI drugs (release)
- Knee-implant maker MAKO Surgical slashes IPO price range (release)
- eScreen takes in $8M for automated drug screening (peHUB)
- GlucoLight gets undisclosed funding for glucose monitoring (release)
- Oddo et al. order $4M for odor-sniffer Odotech (release)
- Baird Capital Partners acquires med-device manufacturer Ellman Int’l (peHUB)
- Cancer biotech BiPar names Hoyoung Huh as CEO (release)
AstraZeneca spinout Albireo raises $27M for GI drugs – AstraZeneca spun out a new biotech startup, Albireo (no Web site), with the help of venture backers who provided $27 million in a first funding round. Investors included Nomura Phase4 Ventures, TVM Capital and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.
Albireo, which will be based in Gothenburg, Sweden, will focus on unspecified gastrointestinal diseases. The company will take over one experimental drug that is already in clinical testing, plus a number of other candidates at earlier stages of development. Albireo anticipates expanding its first round of funding to as much as $40 million.
Knee-implant maker MAKO Surgical slashes IPO price range – Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based MAKO Surgical, a developer of knee implants and associated robotic-surgery systems, slashed its expected IPO pricing by 30 percent. The company now expects its shares to price between $10 and $11 apiece, down from an earlier range of $14 to $16.
MAKO now stands to raise no more than $63.8 million, down from as much as $93.8 million under its previous expectation. Following the offering — if it takes place — the company could have a market capitalization of as much as $202.4 million.
The retrenchment is the latest sign of trouble brewing in the life-sciences IPO market, which wasn’t actually all that healthy to begin with. Should MAKO fail to price its offering, it would become the eighth life-science startup to yank its IPO this year — assuming no other company gets there first, that is.
One Comment
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Howard J. Leonhardt said:
Raising $63.8 million is a great accomplishment! MAKO is another South Florida Biosciences success story! Home of Cordis, World Medical, Bolton and Bioheart, Inc. other great life science companies. The University of Miami recently recruited Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt from Duke, Dr. Joshua Hare from Johns Hopkins, Dr. William O’Neill from Willima Beumont Detroit and Dr. Juan Parodi from Washington University Hospital St. Louis, MO. South Florida with Scripps and Max Planck is now emerging to be the Life Sciences growth center of the U.S.!
2 Trackbacks
2:55 pm
Levitation option still valid for Wile E. Coyote » VentureBeat said:
[...] gone down in flames so far this year. An eighth startup, robotic-surgery maker MAKO Surgical, just slashed its offering price. For more stories on VentureBeat Life Sciences, click here.Tagged IPO, IPO withdrawal, life [...]
8:27 pm
Three yards and a cloud of dust: Bioheart makes it across the IPO goal line, but with little to show for its struggles » VentureBeat said:
[...] of the opportunity to tout Bioheart in our comments section. (Leonhardt’s comment appears here; Farley’s is here.) I say “apparently” because I don’t have independent [...]