VentureBeat

Featured companies: Bind Biosciences, Clarus Therapeutics, HealOr, HistroRx, Plasticell, SpinalMotion, Xenome, Yaupon Therapeutics

UPDATED: Expanded items on SpinalMotion and Plasticell. Previous items on Evalve and Excaliard have been expanded into standalone posts here and here.

Spinal-disc maker SpinalMotion arranges $14M loan facility — SpinalMotion, a Mountain View, Calif., developer of artificial spinal discs, arranged a $14 million “loan facility” — sort of a line of credit — with GE Healthcare Financial Services. The company last raised $20 million in a third round in September 2006, and to date has raised a total of $44.2 million in venture funding, according to VentureWire (subscription required).

SpinalMotion’s artificial cervical and and lumbar discs are designed to provide alternatives to spinal-fusion surgery or an approved artificial disc (J&J’s Charite) for degenerative-disc conditions. Both are being tested in large clinical trials, and the company said in June that both trials are now fully enrolled.

I wasn’t able to reach anyone at the company — the release itself was issued by GE Healthcare — and so haven’t had a chance to ask why SpinalMotion decided to take on debt rather than pursuing another venture-financing round. The obvious answer would be that management believes the company can get better terms from either VCs, IPO investors or potential acquirers following the release of those clinical-trial results, and is willing to take on debt to tide the company over until the data is in.

The obvious risk, meanwhile, is that if either or both trials go sour, the company will be in much more of a hole if it plans to raise new funds. It’s a calculated gamble, one whose outcome will be interesting to observe.

Plasticell takes in £690K for stem-cell work — Plasticell, a U.K. biotech hoping to develop new drugs that mimic the regenerative effects of stem cells, has pulled in £690,000 ($1.4 million) in the company’s first institutional funding round.

The Capital Fund, a London-based VC outfit, provided £250,000 of that funding, while unidentified existing invested accounted for another £440,000. Plasticell also received a £1.1 million grant from the U.K. government in January to develop robotic systems for culturing stem cells.

Plasticell hasn’t yet made much of a splash, although its scientific advisors include some heavy hitters in the U.K. stem-cell research community, including Sir Martin Evans, who shared the Nobel Prize last month. The company is pursuing two complementary objectives: Culturing stem cells in order to identify the various biochemical signals that cause them to “differentiate” into various types of body tissue, and searching for drugs that might mimic or alter those signals in both stem cells and normal cells.

Such work could have a variety of applications, such as cancer treatments or “regenerative medicine” that restores tissues damaged by disease or injury. In a way, the company’s efforts parallel work by other research teams that recently reported a way of “reprogramming” normal cells to convert them into stem cells (see our coverage).

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Exiqon to buy cancer-diagnostics startup Oncotech for $45M (GenomeWeb, reg req’d)
• Australia’s Xenome raises $10M for new peptide drugs (release)
• Nanoparticle-drug maker Bind Biosciences receives $16M (release)
• Yaupon takes in $16M for cancer, CNS drugs (release)
• Hormone-drug maker Clarus draws $8M (release)
• Israel’s HealOr receives $8M for skin-care drugs (release)
• HistoRx names Rana Gupta as CEO (release)

Featured companies: Ablynx, Bind Biosciences, Maas Biolab, Oriel Therapeutics, ThromboVision, Xcellerex

(UPDATED: See below.)

Contract biomanufacturer Xcellerex pulls in $31M — Marlborough, Mass.-based Xcellerex, a startup that provides contract “bioprocess” development and manufacturing, raised $31 million in a third funding round. Investors included VantagePoint Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and SCG Investments.

Xcellerex develops modular “turnkey” manufacturing systems for complex biomolecules such as the proteins, peptides, antibodies and nucleic acids used in biotech drugs and vaccines. The company doesn’t, however, appear to name any of the corporate partners for which it is presumably providing these services.

Maas Biolab receives $2.1M grant for potential Lou Gehrig’s treatment — Maas Biolab, an Albuquerque, N.M., company focused on turning the older immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine into a treatment for Lou Gehrig’s disease, received a $2.1 million grant to further its work. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provided the funding.

Maas believes that cyclosporine is a neuroprotective drug and says that it extends the lives of mice with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the technical name for Lou Gehrig’s disease. The company’s experimental drug Mitogard is a proprietary form of cyclosporine specifically intended for adminstration into cerebrospinal fluid. It’s not clear from the Maas Web site if it developed Mitogard or licensed it from elsewhere. The drug is not yet in clinical trials; Maas says the drug will undergo “dose escalation” and “pharmacokinetics” studies — that is, work to ascertain its dose-effectiveness and the way it is distributed and then broken down and eliminated by the body — in order to enable an application for human tests.

Nanopartical startup Bind Biosciences hooks $2M award for targeted drugs — Bind Biosciences, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech developing nanoparticles capable of ferrying drugs to specific locations in the body, received a $2 million grant to further its work. NIST provided the funding.

Bind Biosciences is one of several startups hoping to tailor the biological, physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles in ways that will cause them to hone in on particular tissues or protein targets. By attaching drug molecules to these nanoparticles, it should theoretically be possible to turn them into a new version of “smart-bomb” targeted therapies. Other startups at work in this space that we’ve written about include Tempo Pharmaceuticals and Carigent Therapeutics (see our coverage here and here).

Oriel Therapeutics raises undisclosed sum for new drug inhaler — Oriel Therapeutics, a Research Triangle Park, N.C., device maker focused on a new form of inhaler, raised an undisclosed sum in a third funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The investment was lead by New Leaf Venture Partners; the company declined to disclose other investors or the amount. Oriel claims to be developing a new type of “active” inhaler for drugs for asthma or lung disease.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Houston’s ThromboVision gets $1.5M grant for personalized-medicine diagnostics (Houston Business Journal)
• Infusion-services firm Critical Homecare Solutions files for $125M IPO (Edgar)
• Belgium’s Ablynx, maker of mini-antibodies from llamas, plans IPO later this year (Reuters)

UPDATE: Expanded items on Xcellerex, Maas Biolab, Bind Biosciences, and Oriel Therapeutics.