Life sciences briefing: Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007

Life sciences briefing: Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007

Featured companies: AngioScore, Forsight Labs, Genoptix, Metastatix, Optherion, QLT

UPDATED: See below.

Artery opener AngioScore pulls in $30M — AngioScore, a Fremont, Calif., maker of balloon catheters used to open up clogged arteries, raised $30 million in a fifth funding round. Investors included Telegraph Hill Partners, Psilos Group Management,… Continue Reading

Personalized medicine takes a (tiny) step forward

Personalized medicine takes a (tiny) step forward

(UPDATED: See below.)

For at least a decade, biotech futurists have been predicting that the genomics revolution will lead to medical treatments tailored to the genetic quirks of individuals. And for at least as long, we’ve all been waiting for evidence that this “personalized medicine” revolution is… Continue Reading

Profectus Bio wins $200K grant for HIV therapies

Baltimore, Md.-based Profectus BioSciences, a biotech developing new strategies to attack HIV, received a $200,000 small-business innovation grant from the National Institutes of Health to improve the effectiveness of anti-HIV antibodies. Last month, the company received a similar $300,000 grant (PDF link), just a few… Continue Reading

Koronis: Mutating HIV into extinction

Koronis: Mutating HIV into extinction

(UPDATED: See below.)

Seattle’s Koronis Pharmaceuticals, a biotech focused on antiviral drugs that cleverly attempt to to drive viruses into extinction, got some serious validation yesterday when it raised $20 million to fund a mid-stage “proof of principle” trial for its leading AIDS drug.

Koronis, which was founded… Continue Reading

Profectus Bio pulls in $3M for antiviral drugs

Profectus BioSciences, a Baltimore, Md., developer of antiviral drugs and vaccines targeting HIV, raised $3 million in a private placement. Private investors, including Cross Atlantic Capital Partners and board member Stewart Greenebaum, contributed.

Profectus is developing ways to combine AIDS drugs with “immune modulators” that would… Continue Reading

Reader feedback: Cheap drugs for poor nations, the art of the drug deal

Reader feedback: Cheap drugs for poor nations, the art of the drug deal

I’m at work on a longer post that hasn’t yet come together, so I thought I’d pull an old dodge favored by daily newspaper columnists and respond to some reader comments instead. Fortunately for me, both comments left here in the past day or so… Continue Reading