VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Cantimer takes in $2M for dehydration diagnostics (VentureWire)
• Recodagen launches, takes aim at cancer (release)
• Juniper Diagnostics spins out of ChemSensing (VentureWire)

Cantimer takes in $2M for dehydration diagnostics –The mystery of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cantimer has resolved a bit. We wrote about this stealthy company back in December and reached the conclusion that the company was developing a particular type of nanosensor intended to identify water levels in human tissue.

Now VentureWire reports that Cantimer is doing just that, using a polymer-based sensor for measuring dehydration in saliva. The company plans to market the device in sports medicine and pediatric and elderly care as well as to hospitals and emergency rooms.

The startup also just raised $2 million in a first funding round. AWT Private Investments and angel investors provided the cash.

Recodagen launches, takes aim at cancer – Recodagen (no Web site), a newly launched Seattle biotech working on new cancer drugs, raised an undisclosed sum in a first funding round. The sum falls in the $2 million to $5 million range, according to John Cook’s blog.

Investors included Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Amgen Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners and WRF Capital.

Recodagen was incubated by Seattle’s Accelerator. The company’s technology originated at Washington State University.

Juniper Diagnostics spins out of ChemSensing with new funding– ChemSensing, a Champaign, Ill., developer of sensor arrays, is spinning out Juniper Diagnostics to commercialize its technology for detecting bacteria via breath, VentureWire reports. The new startup will launch with a multi-million-dollar funding round provided by Mariner Equity Management and ChemSensing.

Juniper’s technology involves panels of reactive dyes that change color in response to chemical exposure — in this case, to gases emitted by certain classes of bacteria in the breath of patients with tuberculosis or pneumonia. The company expects that FDA approval of the device may take 18 months to two years.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cantimer, a stealthy developer of sensor technology with biomedical, biodefense and consumer applications, named Robin Stracey as its new CEO. The company’s release is here.

Cantimer’s Web site is still a stub, although it describes the company as “focusing on assessment of human hydration using effective and innovative sensor technology.” Cantimer’s founder and now former CEO, Ray Stewart, is a serial entrepreneur who previously worked as a principle at BayMaterials, a high-tech materials consulting firm. Prior to that, Stewart founded Landec, a developer of “intelligent” polymers that react in specific ways to temperature changes, and prior to that was a scientist at Raychem.

Stewart has also filed a patent application for a “phase change sensor.” Broadly speaking, this is a sort of nanodevice involving an antibody-coated, polymer-based sensor pad and a cantilever arm. Once the antibodies detect a molecule of interest, the polymer expands or contracts, moving the cantilever arm and generating a detectable electric current via a piezoelectric crystal that converts pressure into current. That sort of design would certainly explain Cantimer’s name, which sounds very much like a portmanteau of “cantilever” and “polymer.”

Such nanosensor designs are being studied all over the place — see, for example, our coverage of the U.K. medical-sensor company Vivacta here — so it’s not clear how different Cantimer’s technology might be at this point. Of course, this sort of sensor could have multiple applications just as Cantimer seems to suggest. However, it also appears that Stewart’s patent application may be meeting with resistance at the patent office — see, for instance, the Nov. 13, 2006 “non-final rejection” noted at the Patent and Trademark office site here — although of course it’s also impossible to know if this patent is even the main basis for Cantimer’s technology.

I’m not steeped enough in this field to hazard a guess as to what use this technology might be for “human hydration,” although if it works, there’s no reason it couldn’t be useful for quantifying the presence of water in human blood, tissue or other substances. Presumably the company has something bigger in mind than detecting whether someone is simply dehydrated, though.

Stracey, the new CEO, formerly headed up Applied Imaging, a medical-device company focused on early diagnosis of cancer and genetic disease. Stewart will remain as Cantimer’s chief technology officer.