VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Boston Scientific spinout TriVascular2 takes in $65M (release)
• Inhaled-drug startup Transave raises $35M (release)
• Triage Wireless gets $20M for vital-signs monitors (release)
• Tryton Medical receives $14M for “bifurcation” stents (release)
  
• Synthetic bio startup Codon Devices adds $11M (release)
• Tracon Pharma takes in $4.5M against cancer and eye disease (VentureWire)
• Antibody maker f-star swaps in equity stake by TVM (PDF release)
• Drug packager MonoSol Rx withdraws IPO (IPOhome)
• GE Healthcare acquires portable-ventilator maker VersaMed (release)

Boston Scientific spinout TriVascular2 takes in $65M – In 2005, Boston Scientific acquired a Santa Rosa, Calif., medical-device startup called TriVascular. Today, it spun it out once again.

The newly private startup raised $65 million in a “first” funding round from the likes of MPM Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Delphi Ventures and Kearny Venture Partners. Thirty million dollars of that sum went straight to Boston Scientific, which also retains the right to take a minority stake in the company.

TriVascular’s original CEO, Michael Chobotov, will resume that position at the new company, joined by two other TriVascular founders. It’s not, however, entirely clear what TriVascular will be doing. The company was originally focused on repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms, which are unusual swellings of blood vessels that can rupture unexpectedly, often fatally. Boston Scientific, however, shut down its aneurysm-repair business in 2006, so it’s not immediately obvious that the reborn TriVascular will jump right back in.

Inhaled-drug startup Transave raises $35M – Transave, a Monmouth, N.J., biotech working on inhaled drugs for lung disease, raised $35 million in a fourth funding round. Investors included Quaker BioVentures, Bessemer Venture Partners, TVM Capital, Prospect Venture Partners, Fidelity Biosciences, Forbion Capital Partners and Easton Capital.

The startup is working on inhalable drugs for cystic fibrosis — in particular, a long-lasting form of the antibiotic amikacin, which is currently in mid-stage, phase II human testing. Transave had previously raised $58 million in venture capital, including a “recently completed” $40 million round.

Triage Wireless gets $20M for vital-signs monitors – Triage Wireless, a San Diego medical-device maker, raised $20.3 million in a second funding round. Investors included Qualcomm Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, 3i Group and Intel Capital.

Triage is developing wireless vital-signs monitors for long-term or continuous use. Its first product is a blood-pressure sensor that doesn’t require the old familiar inflated cuff.

An implantable and odd-looking microtelescope from a Saratoga, Calif., device maker could be one of the next big things in treating a common form of blindness — assuming that patients are willing to endure arduous surgery in order to obtain their new bionic eyes.

Age-related macular degeneration — a progressive loss of sight related to physical changes in the central retina, also called the macula — is the leading cause of blindness among elderly Americans, now affecting more than 1.75 million people, and potentially almost three million by 2020 (PDF link). Until recently, AMD patients had little choice but to accept the steady loss of vision as their macula deteriorated.

Over the past few years, biotech companies have made some headway against the “wet” form of AMD, in which abnormal vessels in the retina leak blood and fluid that distorts vision. In particular, two drugs from Genentech, Lucentis and Avastin, appear to block the growth of those blood vessels and, for the first time, appear to improve vision in many AMD patients. (Avastin, however, isn’t approved for AMD, although at these doses it is roughly a hundred times cheaper than Lucentis. Genentech is, of course, doing all it can to keep patients on Lucentis.) Now that those drugs have been proven to work, new experimental treatments for wet AMD are everywhere — see, for instance, our coverage here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Not everyone responds to the existing drugs, however, and they don’t work at all in people with the “dry” form of AMD (a group that accounts for close to 90 percent of all AMD patients). Which is where a transplanted Israeli medical-device firm called VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies and its implantable microtelescope come in.

Both forms of AMD typically first degrade “central vision” — essentially, your ability to see whatever you’ve focused your eyes on. While many AMD patients retain some peripheral vision, losing central vision in both eyes makes it all but impossible to drive, read or perform many other daily activities. That characteristic of the disease, however, is what drove Isaac Lipshitz and Yossi Gross to found VisionCare in the mid-1990s, with the goal of developing an implantable device that might restore vision even without addressing the underlying cause of AMD.

Lipshitz designed a tiny but powerful telescope that acts like a telephoto lens, essentially enlarging images by a factor of three. That, in turn, “spreads” central vision across a wider swathe of the retina, allowing healthy retinal cells to interpret images that previously would have been restricted to their damaged macular counterparts (see graphic below).

The only catch, of course, is that you have to have this microtelescope implanted in your eye, which is not a particularly easy procedure. Surgeons must essentially lift up the cornea by one edge in order to wedge the four-millimeter-long telescope underneath it. A recent study in the Archives of Ophthalmology outlined two years of surgical experience with the device, noting that the procedure frequently damaged the endothelial cells that line the outer surface of the eyeball, and in a few cases required a complete corneal transplant.

Those risks, however, may well be worth it for patients who otherwise risk permanently losing much of their sight. In a year-long clinical trial involving 217 patients who had the device implanted in one eye, 90 percent of the subjects gained the ability to see an additional two lines on an eye chart. After a year, two-thirds of the volunteers experienced a doubling in their visual acuity (equivalent to a three-line gain on the eye chart), and 25 percent gained five lines of vision. Those patients recently completed a two-year followup, and VisionCare — now headquartered in Saratoga — expects the FDA to approve the implant by the end of this year.

VisionCare had raised roughly $46 million as of Jan. 2005, according to this VentureWire story (subscription required). The company is backed by Boston Scientific and a variety of VC firms, including Onset Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, Three Arch Partners and Infinity Venture Capital.

For more background, see this recent Scientific American article, this item at MedGadget, and this historical piece published by the nonprofit Israel21C.

Boston Scientific agreed to acquire Remon Medical Technologies, an Israeli maker of wireless technology for communicating with implanted medical devices. The companies didn’t disclose financial terms; their release is here.

Founded in 1997, Remon struck a co-development deal with Guidant in 2004. Boston Scientific acquired Guidant last year.

From the Boston Scientific press release:

“Remon Medical Technologies brings to Boston Scientific innovative sensor and wireless communication technology to Boston Scientific, which complements our Cardiac Rhythm Management product line,” said Fred Colen, Executive Vice President, Operations and Technology, CRM, and Chief Technology Officer. “This acquisition reflects our commitment to being a leader in the CRM market through the introduction of innovative products and services for the benefit of physicians and their patients.”

“We’ve spent the last several years developing smart, miniature implants designed to enable physicians to assess and treat a variety of medical conditions in a non-invasive manner,” said Hezi Himelfarb, Remon Medical Technologies, Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer. “The acquisition by Boston Scientific will position Remon as a recognized leader in intra-body wireless communication and help realize the potential of our technology, once integrated into the portfolio of Boston Scientific products.”

Intelect Medical, a Cleveland developer of neuromodulation devices for the treatment of brain injury, raised $7 million in a second funding round. The company is currently exploring ways of using deep-brain stimulation, in which implanted electrodes zap particular regions of the brain with calibrated jolts of electricity, in order to rehabilitate brains damaged by injury or stroke. DBS — which is sometimes described as a “pacemaker for the brain” — is currently approved for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and various forms of tremor.

Medical-device companies Boston Scientific and Greatbatch funded the round. In 2005, Intelect raised $3 million in a first round from Biomec, a device maker that was later acquired by Greatbatch.

Asthmatx, a Mountain View, Calif., developer of a bronchial device for asthma treatment, raised $50 million by selling a 15% stake to Olympus Medical Systems, a unit of Japan’s camera and precision-device maker Olympus.

Last October, Asthmatx withdrew an IPO at the last minute, citing a desire to pursue “alternative strategic options” — that is, better offers. And it seems to have found one; Dan Primack at PE Wire figures that Asthmatx’s current $280 million pre-money valuation is close to twice what it would have been in the planned IPO.

Asthmatx makes an experimental device that uses heat to thin smooth-muscle tissue in the airways of asthmatic patients, with the aim of inhibiting the muscular contractions typical of an asthma attack. (The company gently refers to this process as “delivering controlled thermal energy” to the airway’s smooth muscle.) Known formally as bronchial thermoplasty, the technique involves a catheter and a small heatable wire “basket” that a physician can extend into the airways of the lungs. Patients are sedated during the procedure, but don’t have to be hospitalized.

In March, a team of doctors funded by Asthmatx reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that bronchial thermoplasty with the company’s Alair device appeared to reduce the frequency of asthmatic attacks compared to a control group. That study, however, is difficult to interpret, as a significant number of patients dropped out during a “washout” period in which they had to give up their asthma medications for two weeks prior to the onset of treatment. The researchers also cautioned that thermoplasty “may increase the potential for a strong placebo effect,” which of course would make it difficult to know how much the treatment actually helped patients.

Asthmatx had previously raised $42.5 million in venture funding from a number of backers, including Polaris Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Vanguard Ventures, HBM BioCapital, MedVenture Associates, Boston Scientific and Montreux Equity Partners. A release of sorts on the funding is here; VentureWire has more here (subscription required).