VentureBeat

Featured companies: BioVex, Cavadis, Innovention, Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Phase Bioscience, Reliant Pharmaceuticals, Xencor

UPDATED: Expanded Paratek and Xencor items.

Paratek Pharma raises $40M for new antibiotics — Boston’s Paratek Pharmaceuticals, a biotech working on new antibiotics to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections, raised a first tranche of a $40 million eighth round of funding. The company’s release is here, VentureWire (subscription required) has more details here.

Investors in this funding included Aisling Capital, D.E. Shaw, Boston Life Science Venture Corporation, Nomura Phase4 Ventures, Novartis BioVentures, BioFund Ventures, HBM BioVentures, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, BioVeda Fund and Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Paratek’s lead drug candidate, PTK 0796, is being studied against skin-structure infections and community-acquired pneumonia.

Xencor raises additional $15M for cancer, immune-disease drugs — Xencor, a Monrovia, Calif., biotech developing “engineered” protein- and antibody-based drugs, raised an additional $15 million in its fifth funding round, bringing the total to $60 million. Investors included Oxford Bioscience Partners, Merlin Nexus, Novo Nordisk, MedImmune Ventures, HealthCare Ventures and Zen Investments.

Xenocor’s lead candidate is an antibody that could target Hodgkin’s disease and T-cell lymphoma. The company expects to begin early-stage human trials later this year.

HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Protein purifier Phase Bioscience pulls in an additional $5.4 million (American Venture Magazine)
• Reliant Pharma trims IPO plans, aims for $364M offering (Edgar)
• Cavadis, developer of diagnostics for “vulnerable” coronary plaques, raises seed funding (PDF release)
• Innovention Tech pulls in $115,000 for new surgical probe (release)
• BioVex names Jan van Heek chairman (release)

Woburn, Mass.-based BioVex, a biotech working on new ways to attack cancer and infections, raised $22 million in a fifth funding round. Triathlon Medical Ventures led the round, joined by New Science Ventures, Forbion Capital Ventures, Avalon Ventures, Credit Agricole Private Equity, GeneChem Management, Innoven Partners and Scottish Equity Partners.

BioVex is developing so-called oncolytic viruses, which are designed to infect and destroy tumor cells — long a promising but never-proven anti-cancer technique. The company put an unusual twist on the concept by adding a gene to a herpes simplex virus that expresses GM-CSF (granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor), a molecule that stimulates a strong immune response. Ideally, this virus should infect tumor cells while leaving healthy cells alone, then hijack the tumor cells’ own internal machinery to manufacture GM-CSF, stimulating an immune response that should also be directed at the tumor cells.

That experimental drug, OncoVex GM-CSF, is currently in mid-stage human tests against skin cancer and early tests against head and neck cancer. BioVex is also developing a vaccine against genital herpes. The company had filed to go public last year, but withdrew its proposed offering last October.